John Jonas (Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast, Ep. 224) argues that employer flexibility helps retain high-performing online Filipino specialists (OFS). He shares multiple personal anecdotes: one OFS who resigned to manage a family business but returned as a part-time worker after a flexible offer, and a developer who took a higher-paying Singapore job but continued part-time before moving on. Jonas explains that accommodating changed hours, roles, or part-time arrangements often preserves productivity, loyalty, and expanded skills, and notes cultural factors (strong Filipino family obligations) that drive such transitions.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 224 how flexibility help keeps your rockstar ofs. So one of the things I've always tried to do with the people that I have in the Philippines is to be flexible with them. Like jobs change or people's skill sets evolve or people get bored with their job or they don't like it or they want to. They want to make, they want to do something new. And so I've always tried to be flexible with people. So I got this email about being flexible from a longtime subscriber and let me read this to you. One of my valued OFS sent me a formal resignation letter a few months ago out of left field. He had to suddenly take over his family business. Even though he didn't like the business and he loved working for me, I wasn't ready to lose him because he is fantastic at his job and great at communicating. So here's what I wrote to him. She writes back to him this is very sad news. Is there any chance we can hop on a Zoom call? I'd like to propose some flexible part time options and I am also open to suggestions if you don't just have any bandwidth. At the very least it would be nice to chat one more time in person kind of with Zoom, I guess. She continues. To me, I think he might not have considered that part time would be an option. Also, he was pretty overwhelmed with his new situation and he was worried about letting me down. Anyhow, it turned out great. He was very excited to work part time and we were back on track within a few days. He has been his usual superstar self ever since. He gets so much work done at such high quality. Less hours are not an issue to me. I probably have more room for flexibility than some employers since my team has always worked their preferred hours Monday to Friday. So let me start this by talking about the worker's situation here. I've had this happen to me where someone's family member dies. You have a family business and someone in the family is expected to take it over. Whether or not they want to isn't part of the conversation. It's you must do this. And Filipino family culture is very, very strong and it's a very top down authority culture. And so like he really kind of doesn't have a choice of take over this business or not. He has to or he loses his family is really kind of the option. So that's that part of it now in terms of the flexibility part of it from this employer. Good for you for allowing him to change what he's doing. So I had a similar situation years ago where I had a developer who, he was amazing. He gets this job in Singapore working full time and he's going to make five times the amount that I'm paying him. And this was like his dream job. Like every, every person in the Philippines wants to go overseas and work and so every person wants to go and work overseas and send money home because it's a better job and it's a better hope for the future. This one was particularly good for him because he was going to make so much more and it was in a place where he could live affordably also. So it was really like a dream job once in a lifetime and it's good for his kids and his family and he was going to take the job. And so he sent me this email that says, sir, I got this job and I'm going to take the job, but don't worry, sir, I'll continue to work for you part time at the rate you're currently paying me. He didn't want to use the new job as leverage with me. He just wanted to keep working for me because he liked his work and he felt a loyalty, obligation to me because he had been working for me and it was, it was really, really great. And he worked for me for a while and I finally let him go because he, I knew that I, I knew that my situation with him wasn't so great and he had this other situation that was really, really amazing and, and I just let him go and thrive in that other situation, which he has. He's done really, really well. But that flexibility for me for a while was really, really great. I've also had other situations where I have people that are like, hey, I don't like what I'm doing anymore. Like, I'm bored with this. It's not working out right. It's just, I just don't like it. And for me, that like, great. So we'll try and figure out like, what do you want to work on? What do you think you can contribute to the business? What can you do that's going to be good for us? And there's been times where I've said, yeah, I don't really want to go down that route, I don't want to do that, so I want you to keep doing your job or, yeah, let's do this or let's find something else for you to do, and then I'll hire someone else to do the job that you're currently doing, which that's completely reasonable. In each of those situations where the person comes to me and says, yeah, I'm not really happy with my job, they turn out to be a better worker. As they transition, as I'm flexible with them, they just continue to be a rock star or even get better, and they expand their knowledge. And it's just been really, really great for me. So anytime you can be flexible with someone who is working for you, not anytime, but almost every time it turns out to be really great for you, you'll often see another opportunity, or you may need to change your working hours or the times of day or something like that. And. And I have found these kinds of things to be really, really good for.
