The digitalization of labour is one of the critical facets of the burgeoning digital economy.

In this contest, non-traditional modes of employment have also emerged.

A paper of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, published on December 2020 (“Online Work in the Philippines: Some Lessons in the Asian Context”) outlined that data from Google Trends show that interest in “online work” has increased in the Philippines starting 8 March 2020. This search term reached its peak popularity in the Philippines at the time when the State has made definite pronouncements on the shift towards more relaxed community quarantines.

The same paper reports that, in the US projects related to software development/technology have been largely unaffected by the ongoing pandemic. While those related to creative/multimedia and sales/marketing support have been adversely affected. This puts the development of skills necessary for value creation in online work at the forefront, especially in countries where workers are doing jobs at the lower end of the value chain.

Jose Roland A. Moya, ECOP Director General commented that “[a]s the COVID-19 crisis confined our lives to the internet, it also presented a major challenge: online learning. The Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) saw it as an opportunity. The pandemic exposed to the fullest extent the other services an employers’ organization could offer. The eCampus platform has given us a competitive advantage by allowing us to become one of the few, if not the only, business organization in the Philippines to also be a training institution that makes use of an e-learning platform." ()

At the height of the pandemic, the ability of the ECOP members to diversify revenue streams by leveraging the services of the training department kept them engaged and gave stability to the finances of the organization.  

Mr Edgardo Lacson, ECOP Chairman of the Board, said that"[t]he eCampus Platform sounds like rocket science, but digital is the only way forward for every facet of life. Thank you for bringing ECOP to a new frontier."

Today, the ECOP eCampus offers 60 courses, with an average of 20 to 30 participants per programme, and the amount of training services per week has doubled.

It serves ECOPS policy action, and to provide concrete services to members, and move toward digital technology, online services, and e-training.

The eCampus, as ITCILO describes in a presentation of the project, is a learning management system (LMS) platform that allows ECOP to offer courses and programmes, either fully online or through a blended approach on topics such as industrial relations, human resource management, occupational safety and health, entrepreneurship, management development and employee development. 

It complements online and face-to-face training programmes and allows participants to learn anywhere and anytime, just accessing to the platform as a member. At the end of the eCampus, the participant also get a certificate related to the courses, fully online.

The messaging system of the Campus has been well received by many participants, who are sharing share their insights and company best practices and seeking advise from instructors.

The eCampus has also helped the ECOP Training and Development Department roll out training services by:

• Serving as a repository of training materials (videos, articles, PowerPoint presentations, and other relevant learning content); 
• Allowing the automation of formulating training certificates;
• Enabling the access of recorded videos and sessions;
• Evaluating the participants; 
• Keeping track of students activities.