A short informal YouTube talk (by John Jonas) advising employers who hire Filipino virtual assistants about Christmas and New Year holiday norms in the Philippines. Jonas explains that Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day are widely observed and that many Filipinos take the week between Christmas and New Year's off. He recommends discussing expectations in early December, allowing time off or requiring limited checking of email/PM systems, and making role-specific arrangements (e.g., reduced hours for customer support, or no interruption for critical e‑commerce work). The video closes with a plug for his book The Outsourcing Lever.
Chapters
How to handle christmas with filipino vas. Hey, my name is John Jonas and I'm going to talk about Christmas and the holidays and your Filipino workers. So the first time I hired a Filipino worker, I had no idea what would go on during Christmas, and I worked all through it and I just kind of assumed he would. And I didn't realize that the week between Christmas and New Year's and especially the New Year's Day holiday is a really, really big deal in the Philippines. And in fact, over the years, I've seen that a lot of Filipino VA's will quit around Christmas time if they don't know their boss's expectations because it's such an important time for them that they don't want to let their boss down by not working and expecting to come back to work. So they rather just quit, which is they don't really realize that it really lets their boss down even more. Here's what you can expect them to want to do, and then here's what you can do with it. Number one, Christmas is a day off. Number two, New Year's Day is a day off. New Year's Eve is a day off. And actually, I believe there's another day off in there. Maybe the day after Christmas or New Year's Eve or Christmas Eve or maybe the day after. I don't know, I don't really remember. But it's a really important time for them. And most of the Philippines takes the week off between Christmas and New Year's Day. So there's six days of off time during that time. Now, what we do for this time is around the 20th. I tell people, you guys don't need to work from Christmas to New Year's. We're fine with you not working. What I want you to do, though, is to check your email every day and check the project management system every day just to make sure that there's nothing urgent that comes up. Nothing, nothing needs to be done. Me and my business. Now, if you're in an E Commerce business, that's probably not okay for you. And for my customer service people, I say, hey, you guys can cut your hours down, but you still have to work every day because we still have customer support stuff that needs to happen. Now, the customer support goes way down for us during that time. But if you're in E Commerce, this may not be the case. So right now, well before Christmas, early December is a good time to talk to them and say, especially if this is a really important time for you, say, hey, I need you to Work the week between Christmas and New Year's. It's a super important time for us. What I would like for you to do is take a week off after New Year's or when we slow down, when your business slows down, tell them, hey, I want you to take a week off then, or whatever it is. So it's this week off. You don't have to give the week off. They can work during it. You could say, hey, I really want you to just continue to work as normal during this time. They're going to be disappointed. Their families are going to be disappointed. But it's a doable thing. So to summarize this whole thing, the week of Christmas and New Year's is an important week for them. Christmas Day is important. Christmas Eve is important. New Year's Eve is important. New Year's Day is important. And in the Philippines, basically everybody has those days off. There's no work in those days. And in the week between, a lot of the Philippines takes off. So you can do with this whatever demands from your business, but just be aware of the culture and be sensitive to it and talk to them about it ahead of time. My name is John Jonas and I talk through this in my book the Outsourcing Lever, which you can get for free@outrigourcinglever.com it's all about how to hire virtual workers in the Philippines. And I tell you how I got started in it and why it works so well and why it's going to work for you and the kind of talent you can find. And I covered everything I could think of in this book and it's 113 pages. It won't take you very long to read, but I'm giving it away for free. Go to outsourcinglever.com just pay shipping. I think it's $7 for shipping and I'll ship it straight to you. The physical book and you can become an expert at hiring virtual workers in the Philippines pretty quickly. Again, my name is John Jonas.
