Kathleen, an association manager, credits Filipino staff with keeping her business profitable for six years. She describes their strong work ethic, preference for chat over calls, and her strategy of conditional paid time off and bonuses to ensure they take breaks and cover tech costs.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS. This is episode 322 my OFS help my business Stay Profitable. So I mention this often that I I mean I get emails from people talking about their successes and this is this one is no different. It comes from Kathleen and she's one of hundreds of thousands of business owners who have found that working with people in the Philippines has changed their business and helped make their business profitable. She has found amazing workers through onlinejobs ph people who just want to work. People who if given the chance, will do their best to help your business grow because they want a job. Now I'm going to read Kathleen's email to you because she has a lot of really good stuff in it, including talking about how they don't want to take time off. So here we go. I just wanted to let you know that I do appreciate all these newsletters with excellent information. I'm working with an international Filipino, India, UK and other countries team. The core of my day to day operations are Filipinos. I've been using your service for the past six years and here I am still in bed and my staff have been working furiously for the past three hours. One thing that is a constant struggle with the good workers in the Philippines is that they want to please you so much that they would rather work quietly than be honest about an illness or technical problem or something they do not fully understand. I make it clear to them that after the first few months of proven work that they can most times have paid time off if they will only discuss the issue with me. The best way to communicate I have found is private Skype or Google chat because as you have said in earlier posts, they tend to be very shy about video, any kind of group discussion or even phone calls. I emphasize that honesty is more important to me than anything. Yet some workers even years later still struggle with the fear of losing their jobs or embarrassed about the chicken and dog noises in the background and so I have to be very pushy about telling them to take the time off they need. Sometimes I have to offer to help them directly with a technical issue that they are trying to hide because they don't have the money to replace that particular piece of equipment. Maybe I specify that a bonus they might otherwise have not expected must be spent for this specific issue. Putting it as a must spend bonus helps them save face about their jobs and is better than offering to pay for it directly. My Filipino workforce is the primary reason I'VE been able to stay profitable for the past six years. From Kathleen Association Manager, National Buyer's Agents association so interesting, some of the things that Kathleen has, and I want to talk about some of them because I have the same things on my team. So, number one, very often they are so concerned with doing great work that they don't want to take time off or they're scared to take time off. And realistically, it took me and still takes years before most people are willing to take any sort of time off. When someone comes to me with a problem, I almost always tell them I'm so sor. Take whatever time off you need. And they'll often say, oh, I'll make up for it tonight. And then I say to them, no, you don't need to make up for it tonight. Just take the time off. Kathleen's take on computer equipment is a really interesting one that I haven't thought about. But sometimes she's right. They will work through computers being broken or monitors being terrible or all kinds of issues because they don't want to take a chance of losing their job and because they're embarrassed to tell you that they have a problem. And I love her approach to this, saying, here's an unexpected bonus because you're doing great, but you must use part of this or all of this in order to fix the problem that you're having with your computer, rather than saying, oh, let me buy that for you, because I get it. Like, they don't. They're concerned. They don't want you to have to take care of that for them. Although they're always grateful if you do, which we often do, and they're very grateful for it. I never considered that maybe they were losing face because we would take care of it for them. So maybe we'll change our approach with that last. So Kathleen didn't talk about this a lot other than she's still in bed and her team has been working for three hours already. There is something really, really satisfying with knowing that your business is being worked on while you sleep. Well, when I go to bed at night, my team is working and they're answering questions and they're developing things and they're designing things and they're working on programming things, and they're doing work that could be done at my time, but instead it's being done while I sleep. There really is just something satisfying about knowing 247 stuff is happening in my business, and nobody is being forced to work 24. 7 to make that happen. And that includes while I'm on vacation or when I'm sick, or when my kids have something for me to go to, or when I just don't feel like working that day. Things are still happening because of what my Filipino team can do. If you haven't yet hired an ofs, today's a really good day to post a job. Or if you have something holding you back, let me know. I want to know what's holding you back. See? Send me an email. Johnnlinejobs phone.
