John Jonas explains why Filipino virtual assistants quit shortly after training. The problem usually isn't the hire—it's unclear instructions, poor treatment, or tasks they dislike. He recommends contacting departed workers for honest feedback and simplifying your onboarding process.
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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 275 presenting an OFS from resigning early. So I got this email from Virginia, which is another question I get asked kind of often about hiring an ofs. Here's what she says. We seem to be getting a lot of great potential VAs. They all say the right things on the interview, but then we train them for two weeks and they leave. Or flat out caught them lying when they forgot to mute themselves on Zoom. It's been such a disappointing process. I'm wondering if you can send us some candidates that are reliable as it takes up so much of our time to train them and we are needing help asap. We realize that we might need to slow down on the training process and giving tasks, but they seem to want it as they are. Quick, please help. We had a VA last year and she helped us organize the training material. She had to leave as she could not provide full time work. So there's a couple things going on here. Number one, if you're experiencing something over and over again, if you're experiencing people disappearing over and over again, which this is, typically when I hear this, this conversation from employers is, oh, I've hired multiple people and they all disappear. Usually if that's the case, something is going on in what you're doing. The people don't like what you're having them do. They don't, they don't like working for you, which is hard to hear. They don't understand the instructions you're giving them. Even though you think they're clear. They may not be. They, they're worried about being embarrassed. So typically when one person disappears, it's because they're worried about losing face. And that's in the end, that's what it comes down to is losing face. They disappear because they don't want to tell you the problem. They don't want to tell you that they don't like what you're the work that you're giving them, or they don't like the way you're treating them, or they just don't want to tell you because telling you might embarrass them and they would lose face. So there are a couple more things to consider then. So number one, it's not easy to find a job in the Philippines. And number two, if they get a job, they really want to keep that job. Like they want to do whatever it takes to keep that job unless things are Wrong. And then they would rather disappear. Now, if this is happening to you at the very beginning of the of working. So like Virginia says, within two weeks they're training, and then they're starting to work and they disappear, that tells me something is wrong in that process. Like, they don't like the work that you're giving them. They don't understand what to do. They don't like the way that they're being treated. They don't like. There are some signs there that are telling them, wow, this is not going to be a good job. And then they disappear because they'd rather do it right now than try and be embarrassed for months and then have to leave. Filipinos don't want to resign. They're very likely not bad people. Or they're not. Not reliable people. They're probably reliable people. They're just something going on. So when Virginia asked me to say, can you send me some reliable people? Well, I can't. I mean, if I knew reliable people that with the skills that you want, that's because I found them and I interviewed them for a role at my company, and they're working for me, and I can't really send you those people. Other than that, I don't really know people. In the Philippines, we just have a job board of like, 2 million Filipino profiles. But I don't know any of those people. So here's my solution to this. And this is what I often tell people. Go back to the people that have quit in a very humble manner, saying something like, I realized that I've done some things wrong and I didn't treat you well. I'm wondering if you would tell me why you resigned. What led you to resigning? Go back and ask these people and tell them it's your fault, but you want their feedback and you want to. You want to know what you can do to improve the future. See if they'll respond to you. Some of them may, some of them probably won't. But if you do, you might just get that nugget that will tell you, oh, this is why people are resigning. And they'll tell you, oh, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do, and the expectations were really, really high, and it wasn't clear what to do. Okay, well, I can fix that. Or, yeah, you're a jerk. Well, that's a harder one to fix, but you can certainly work on that. I'm not saying that to Virginia. If you're listening to this, I'm not saying that you specifically are a jerk, but you might. If you just ask, you might find the problem. And if you have currently people that are training, you might ask them, hey, I realize I've probably done some things wrong in the past with other people, and I'm hoping I'm not doing it with you. But I wonder, if I am, can you tell me, please don't resign and tell me what I'm doing wrong? They might tell you. So here's the last piece that everybody's always surprised to hear and nobody ever wants to hear. So in probably 95% of cases, when it doesn't work out with employer and worker, we find that the worker is reliable, the worker is good, the worker does want the job, they're not lazy. We find it's the employer, it's not the worker. Maybe it's not 95%. Maybe it's 90% of cases where it doesn't work out. It's actually the employer that's the problem, not the worker. Now, nobody wants to hear that. Everybody wants to hear that. Employers want to hear they're great and they know what they're doing and their instructions were perfectly clear and everything was great. But when we see both sides, which we do, probably 90% of the time, it's actually the employer who is the problem and not the worker. So something to consider. If you're having people resign, consider your process. Consider what's going on there. I hope this is helpful.
