John Jonas explores why Filipino outsourced staff sometimes struggle to accept praise or criticism. He traces possible causes from personality and socioeconomic background to cultural pressure on Filipino women to prioritize family and repay debts. His advice: if they're good at the work, keep them; if not, replace them.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 144 when your OFS can't take praise or criticism well, I recently got an email from Kim who I'm just going to read this to you. Here's what she says. John, is there something in the Filipino culture that has my ofs have such low self esteem. No matter how much I praise her, no matter how much I give her paid time off, etc. Her self esteem does not seem to improve. She hears feedback as criticism even when I do my utmost to frame it as instructive, not criticism. Might you write about this? Frankly, it gets a bit exhausting. Constantly feeling I need to build her up. I'm so sorry Kim. That is so exhausting and I completely agree with you. To be honest, I haven't really encountered this before. I know Filipinos are shy. Like they don't, they don't want to stand up or stand out or whatever. And I also think that the power distance index of the Philippines can give the impression that they are like that they have low self esteem. But based off this email, that kind of doesn't seem to be the case that it's just a power distance index thing. When I asked Julia about this, she gave me a number of potential things. Number one, it's just personality. There are some people who just have low self esteem and it doesn't matter what you say to them, it's not going to change. Or there are people who just really don't like receiving praise where they just feel like they're just doing their job and that's it. Worst case, it's an ego thing where, and this is, this could be where they hear criticism. They hear feedback as criticism because they feel like no, everything I did is great and don't tell me what I'm doing. And if you're telling me that, then you're telling me that I'm wrong and I'm bad. And that could just be a personality thing. It could also be due to her like her age. Younger workers are more likely to have this problem. Her background depending on if she was, you know, like a lower, if she was raised lower class or upper middle class or something like that, she could have gone to a bigger school and have a big ego or she could be lower class and she was never good enough for anything. And so anything you ever say to her, she's going to be, she's going to feel that way. Like she's still not good enough. Or it could be like previous work experience where maybe freelancers who have done a lot of freelancing often don't get criticism because as soon as they're done with a job, they leave. Or if they get criticism, they're like, well, I'm out of here. I'm not going to deal with this. Another potential is it could be a mental health thing where, you know, like cognitive distortion. I'm definitely not a mental health professional. I'm not really qualified to talk about this. But someone who has mental health issues can often can see things as criticism when they're not. And mental health in the Philippines is not a priority. Services are not covered by insurance. It, it's really, it's stigmatized as a weakness. Still in the Philippines, it's come a lot. We've come a long way in the US towards improving this in the Philippines. They have, they're not there yet. Another potential is sexism. Like, sexism is still still a thing in the Philippines. It's not as strong as it is in like Thailand, Malaysia, but it's still, it's still there. And often women just feel inferior because they've been treated that way. And it's, if you, if you're saying things to her, she may just have this inferiority complex already and so she's going to see things as you're criticizing when that's not the case. I don't really have a great answer for you, Kim, on this one. It's not something that I have encountered. It's not typical in the Philippines that people would feel like, oh, they're inferior and they are. Everything you say is criticizing them. If she's a good worker, continue to work with her. If it's not working out, you know, it's okay to let someone go and find someone else. In talking about this, I want to talk about sexism for a second because Julia had a lot to say about it. And in fact, we talked back and forth about this. In one of her emails, she wrote something that, I mean, it's long and I want to read this because just to make you. If you're listening to this, you should be aware of the situation in the Philippines. So here's what she says. Even though we have women in positions of power, there's still a lot of pressure to be the ideal wife, mother, daughter. The achievements of women and girls are still considered inferior compared to men. It doesn't matter if you're the president of the Philippines. If your family life sucks, you've failed as a woman, which is not the same thing. This is me. This is not the same thing. For men if their family life sucks, they haven't failed as a man. They're the CEO of a company and you're successful, you've succeeded in life, she continues. Sexism is so ingrained that daughters are still jokingly referred to as pambayad utang, which is translated payment of debt. It's the eldest daughter's responsibility to take care of the family. They're expected to sacrifice everything for the family. Hence the inability to accept praise and criticism. Hard to accept praise when you feel all your work is never enough. Hard to accept criticism when you've worked so hard all your life and it's still not enough. I think this might be a part of it, but just a small part, Julia continues The workplace has given Filipino women freedom and power. The the literacy rate gap between men and women in the Philippines is now less than 1%. More women are finishing school to enter the workplace. We have even better graduation rates than men, which I believe is actually true in the US right now. Personally, when I finished school and started working, I felt empowered. Sure, I had a sexism chip on my shoulder, but I also knew I can do just as well, sometimes better than my male peers. I also had a lot of bosses, men and women who made sure that we were seen and treated equally. That helped me a lot with my self esteem. Even though the gender pay gap in the Philippines still exists, we're seeing improvements in this because more women are getting better educated and gaining skills at a faster rate. I think this explains in part why we have more women than men. This is still Julia talking. I think this explains in part why we have more women than men in our database@onlinejobs.ph Working from home gives women the best of both worlds. Online work allows them to practice their skills in education while taking care of their home. The bad thing about online work though is we don't really get the same respect or recognition as our office working peers. No, this is just me. This is an interesting thing about the Philippines that I've noticed is that you're working at home on your own hours, your own time. You have a foreign boss, which I know, I know they look up to foreign bosses. You're working for a good foreign company, you probably work a lot less than your peers in an office. You commute less, you spend less, you're making just as much. Maybe you're making more, maybe you're not making quite as much. But overall your quality of life is so much better. And yet working at home, you're looked down upon as if you don't have a real job. You don't have a legitimate real job. Where in the US if you work from home, you're looked up to like, oh, that's so awesome. Good for you. You're amazing. In the Philippines, that's not the case. So just something to be aware of. I don't always have an answer. Sometimes we just have to do hard things. I'm so sorry, Kim. For what you have, it's okay to find someone else.
