John Jonas shares four ways to protect your outsourced Filipino staff when disaster strikes: require laptops or portable hard drives, use cloud storage like Google Drive, collect emergency contacts, and set up an employer emergency fund. He also notes that hiring the best person matters more than limiting by location.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 195, 4 Ways to Disaster Proof your OFS. So in my newsletter I post regular updates about typhoons and earthquakes in the Philippines. And some of you might be worried that like, oh, if I hire to the Philippine, if I hire in the Philippines, is this even worth it? With all the natural disasters given, you know, they get like 30 something typhoons a year and volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. So the question is, is it worth. Yes, it's definitely worth it. Once you hire the right ofs, it is really a life changing experience. So how can you improve your situation or ensure that your workers or that you're not losing work in case of an emergency? So let me give you four things. So number one, you can insist that your workers have laptops or portable hard drives. So laptops are super easy to grab and go. You'd be surprised, man. Like I've had, I've had multiple times over the years where someone said, sir, I'm so sorry we had this typhoon come through, it flooded our house, we lost everything. But don't worry sir, I grabbed my laptop and saved it and sat on top of our roof as the floods filled our house. So like they really, they really want to save their work. And having a laptop is a big deal. If your person doesn't have a laptop, a portable hard drive can really be a good thing. So like it's really easy to save your work to a portable hard drive and then in case of a dis, you grab it and you go. So that's a really good way to help them ensure that work isn't getting lost. So number two, you can invest in cloud storage. So we use Google Drive for a lot of our stuff and actually a lot of our work just happens in Google Drive. Like someone writes content in Google Drive, they write a social media post, someone else edits it in that Google Drive. It comes to me, if I'm going to see this post or whatever, this article, whatever it is, then I see it in Google Drive, then it finally moves on to wherever its final destination is. So cloud storage for things is a really easy way to make sure work really kind of never gets lost. So number three, get some emergency contact information. So for example, there was a typhoon a couple weeks ago and I just got an email a couple of days ago from, from an employer who said, hey, I haven't heard from my OFS since the typhoon and I'm really worried about them. And I said, well, so have you tried to contact them? Yes, I have. Do you have any family contact information? No, I don't. I don't have any emergency contact info. So that's actually kind of a really good idea to have some emergency contact info so that you can contact someone else and say, hey, have you heard from this person? I haven't heard from them in a while. In case of emergency, that's a big deal. That person did respond back to the employer, actually, that, that later that day. So that was a big deal that they were able to. They knew what the situation was with their ofs. So number four, you can set up an emergency fund. So we've done this and it's been super, super helpful. So if your OFS is paying into sss, which is their Social Security, which they should be paying into, they can take out a calamity loan in case of a disaster. However, usually when they're taking out a calamity loan, so is everybody else in their area. And so it'll take time. Like, everybody's going to the SS office, everybody's applying for these loans, and it'll take them time, and then, you know, like, it's a hard recovery. So we've done is we allow our people to come to us and say, hey, I could really use some money for this thing. And usually we'll loan them that money and then we'll have them pay it back based off of their terms. Usually they'll say, take $100 out per month until I paid it back. And usually a couple hundred dollars is sufficient in this. So we'll loan 2, 3, 5, $800, and then they take it out $100 a month or $50 a month until it's paid back. And we've never had a problem with it not being paid back. We've probably done this a couple dozen times. So how big of a loan you allow depends on your financial situation and how comfortable you are with the person that you're loaning it to, how long they've worked for you, how much you trust them, all of it. It all goes into it. I'm not saying you should give a loan to someone right away when they start working for you, you know, like in the first month or two, but after someone's work for you for a while, like, you really want to help that person out. You want to keep them. You want to keep them productive. You want to make sure that they're living well. So just another piece of potential as you're hiring people is you could higher from locations where there are fewer natural disasters. So like Western Visayas and Mindanao, which has Davao or Iloilo, these locations in the Philippines typically have fewer typhoons. Now, that doesn't mean that you're not gonna. I mean, we had a typhoon in Iloilo years and years ago that destroyed everything. But typically these places have fewer typhoons. Also, like, there are some regions, like Cebu doesn't have an earthquake fault, so they're unlikely to have an earthquake there. Or Bohol in region number seven, they don't have active fault lines. They're unlikely to have an earthquake. Now, that doesn't mean they're not gonna have a typhoon. Cebu had a really bad typhoon just last year. So there are definitely possibilities of having things anywhere in the Philippines. But you can, you can find regions where natural disasters are less. Now, to go along with this last word of advice, I said you can hire from specific regions. I've never done this to me. I just want to right person. I don't really care where they are in the Philippines. If a natural disaster that actually affects their work for an extended period of time is so, so rare that it's not worth it to try and only shelter yourself to a specific location where you. You're limited by like, oh, that person would have been amazing. But I want them in this location. That's just not. To me, that's not worth it. Just hire. Hire the best person that you can find for yourself. And if you haven't hired an OFS yet, well, just hire someone. Like, this is really an amazing experience. I just talked to my neighbor the other day. He said, hey, I don't know if you know this, but the OFS that I hired is still with me. It's been a couple years now. And she's amazing. I love her. And she does this and this and this. It really is a good experience when you hire someone. If you haven't done it yet, now's a really good time to take the leap.
