John Jonas (Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast, Ep. 215) argues that organized philanthropy among remote teams builds stronger work culture. He recounts how his Philippines team distributed groceries during the 2020 pandemic and how company-facilitated donation drives (e.g., after Typhoon Carding) reinforced camaraderie, mutual care, and a family-like culture.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 215. Philanthropy creates a really great work culture. So for me, it always makes me really happy when there's a disaster that my team in the Philippines comes together and is really, really helpful. Not that I love disasters, but it's cool to see what happens. So when the pandemic started, this is 2020, my team and individuals on my team started passing out groceries to those in need. And this was specifically to those who couldn't leave their houses, like elderly people or people with young babies. We had no idea this was going on, but when we saw how dire the situation was in the Philippines on the news, we actually reached out to them and said, hey, how is the situation? What's going on there? And then we started hearing about the work that they were doing to pass out groceries and food to people who couldn't get it themselves. So we asked, can we help you with this? Like, can we send you money? And we asked, who's interested in us sending you money to help you pass out food? And we got responses back from tons of our. Tons of people on our team who we were able to send them money, and then they went and passed out food. And it was, it was a really good thing. But even before that, before the pandemic, there was already a sense of camaraderie on our team. There's this like, they check on each other and they care about what's going on. And when someone doesn't show up, they're concerned about it. They want to know what's wrong in this person's life, what's going on with them. They try and help each other. One of our teammates is, he volunteers as a firefighter. I love seeing these things. And I think that when you bring people together, when people help each other, it creates a bond and it strengthens relationships. And so we often try and help our team in the Philippines, and I think that helps strengthen our relationship with our work relationship with them. So obviously this isn't unique to my team of people in the Philippines. I got an email from Steven recently who told me about what happened with Typhoon Carding. So Stephen says, when Carding hit, four of my hundred plus people were affected. So after collecting information on how bad the damages were for each, I sent out a form to all employees. We asked them to donate whatever they would like to help these people out. I front their donations and let them pay it back as deductions. From their weekly salary. Often I give them a few different options for that so they don't have too much of an impact on their daily and weekly expenses. Typically, I also match the total donation we as a company raised this really solidifies our family culture and makes people feel good that they were able to help others in need. We've done this for multiple disasters, funerals, etc. Basically, whenever people are in serious need. Look, disasters are horrible. It's terrible. But there is a silver lining if you allow help to happen. You bring people together, you show people you care, you let other people show that they care about their team, their teammates. It's a good situation. And from their perspective, when you're in need, they're very likely to want to be there to help you too.
