24 Nov 2025 · 2 min
John Jonas answers Rosalie's question about paying part-time outsourced workers in the Philippines on holidays. The key distinction: hourly contractors who set their own hours don't get paid holidays, but scheduled part-time employees do. Send bonuses early because Philippine bank holidays can delay transfers.
Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast. The podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas and this is episode 24, holiday pay for Part Time Workers. So this is just a quick tip. Today I just got an email from Rosalie asking about holiday pay for her ofs. She says hired an OFS to edit one video a week. She works about seven to ten hours a week. For me. I'm wondering about the holiday pay that is often expected or appreciated for this time of year. How does that apply to someone working part time and when is that best sent? So my answer to that is it all depends. So first about general holiday. So in the Philippines it's called regular holidays. They call it regular holidays. And regular holidays are like Christmas, New Year's, Independence Day. Basically a day that banks are closed would be considered a regular holiday. Everyone takes a day off of work. If your part time worker is paid hourly and they set their own hours, you don't need to pay them extra. If they work on holidays, this is up to them. If your part time worker is required to follow a work schedule and one of the days coincides with a holiday, then you can give them holiday pay, typically paid time off or 1.5 times their normal pay on that day. So and this would mean like if someone's working for you part time or full time, I guess we're talking about part time today. But if someone's a part time worker and you expect them to work four hours a day, five days a week, and the holiday is on Thursday, well then you should probably give them that day off and not just say oh yeah, I'm not going to pay you for this. You can work the extra time on Friday. It's kind of not how holidays work. We have a full blog post about this@onlinejobs.ph holidays. Whatever you do, it's your choice if you want to if you want to pay them holiday pay. So let me talk really quickly about specific bonuses around the holidays. So the 13th month especially is best. Or any bonuses or pay around the holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's, it's best to send stuff a few days early. Send money. Bank holidays in the Philippines will almost always delay transfers. So if you want to give your OFS something for holidays, it's best to send it a couple of days before you would normally do it so that they get the money on time. If you wait till December 23rd to send them a Christmas bonus, they may not get that money until January. Banks in the Philippines are, I would say, less than reliable. Send money early. You don't have to send it. It's always a good idea.
