Ep. 332: Fostering Open Communication With Your OFS

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 332, fostering open communication with your OFS. So communication, such an interesting topic. I am not a great communicator. I never have been. And yet somehow I've managed to communicate well enough with people in the Philippines that it works super, super well for me. So I think generally people understand that communication is super important. It's important in a family, it's important in relationships, and it's important in the workplace. But with the Philippines, it's especially important in a couple situations. Number one, when someone doesn't trust their employer, they're not willing to communicate with you. So if you haven't communicated with them enough, if you haven't given them reasons to trust you, they're unlikely to communicate with you when there's a problem. And that's when you lose someone good, that's when they would disappear because they don't trust that telling you something is going to end up good. An easier solution to them is just to walk away. So in order to prevent this, you have to communicate early and you have to communicate often with them. And by communicate I mean you should be giving them feedback and specifically you should be giving them training. Training really, really fosters a lot of trust from your OFS in you. Now, another situation where in the Philippines is communication is super, super important is that person is now working from home. They're likely alone a lot of the day, and if they don't hear from you, they're not really hearing from anyone, which I'm not saying that's your problem. But not hearing from you tells them you don't care. And that is a really big deal. In the Philippines, being cared for is super important. And you communicating with them, just saying good job tells them that you care about their work and their success, which then helps them want to care about you and your success too. So communication is more than just correcting in correcting things that they've done wrong. It's more than just giving training. It's really relationship building with them to build trust and to continue to have them want to do a good job for you. Now, there are two specific ways in which I communicate with people. Actually, there are three, but two primary are. Number one, I use Snagit to make videos. I open it up, drag it out on my desktop, it records my voice and my screen and my mouse, and I can show them exactly what I'm looking For it has the added bonus of them hearing my voice and my intonations and the way that I speak so that they get to know me. And then occasionally they'll send me videos, which is really awesome because I get to hear them and we get to build a relationship, even if it's not face to face. I send Snagit videos to people every single day. The next way we communicate is in Basecamp, our project management system. We have all kinds of projects going on all the time. And then Basecamp also has an automatic check in feature where it will ask anybody you want it to ask who is part of your team? What did you do today? And it'll ask them for a report each day. And then you can see all of the daily reports in one place. Really, really great. Now, when my team was smaller, I responded to every one of those reports. I don't do that anymore. My team is too big for that. But I do have other people in charge of areas where I'm not specifically monitoring. The third way I communicate with people is through email. I personally don't use chat. You could. It's perfectly acceptable. I don't ever do phone calls. You could. It's perfectly acceptable. Although probably less desirable for most people in the Philippines, most people will be totally good with chat. Fewer people will want to do a phone call with you, but you can if that's what you want to do. But what is really important is that you find a way to communicate with the people that you hire. SA.