John Jonas talks about an Online Filipino Specialist who vacationed in La Union and discovered the internet was good enough to work remotely. He explores why OFS rarely take time off and shares how employers can push back: paid trips, unlimited PTO, covering flight costs after loss.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 333 my OFS took a vacation so one of my OFS took a vacation recently. They didn't really tell me they were going on vacation, which was fine because they continued to work while they were there. Now at the end of this, I'm going to talk about vacation because this is kind of. It's an interesting topic in OFS not taking vacations. But first she wrote about this because she went to La Union, which is her husband's hometown. So here's what she wrote about it. It's been years since I last visited Luna La Union. When I last visited almost 10 years ago, it was a sleepy town where the only place worth visiting was the Baluarte Bailwick, a Spanish era stone watchtower and the town plaza where everything is now. If you're watching this on YouTube, hopefully you can see this picture where of what she's describing. If you're listening to it, this is just a whole bunch of stones. Shells. Shells that look like stones, stones that look like shells. Okay, so here's what she Even if you've never been to Luna, you may have seen a piece of it as the town's claim to fame. Luna pebbles are used in everything from jewelry to furniture and other decorative items. If you've ever seen or bought or been in a Zen garden, chances are those smooth round rocks are from Luna. For the most part, it's still a sleepy town. It still gets too dark if you want to go out after sunset. Most stores still close by 7pm but now it has a 7 11, a few more tourist attractions and more restaurants if you're not in the mood to cook the fresh seafood bought from the market. The Belorte, which used to be in ruins, was rebuilt and made more tourist friendly. We could eat by the shore. The shoreline was opened up so people could walk on the pebbles. So I've been to the Philippines just once and typically the shorelines were not beachy. It wasn't. It wasn't a bunch of beach. They were overgrown, they were not usable, they were not nice. In this place, they have opened it up so you can at least walk on these rocks on the shore, she continues. If you live in a town full of rocks, you start finding fun and more creative uses for it. One of the places we enjoyed most during our time here was the Bahe na Bato Rock House. They didn't just build a house with it they created a resort that featured these rocks. There was a museum that showcased the everyday items the locals used throughout history. You could stroll through the garden surrounded by sculptures made of driftwood and rock. Walking around that place was both relaxing and exhausting. Relaxing because the place was really peaceful and serene. Exhausting because nobody told me that walking on rocks meant sinking into them, like walking through mud, but drier and harder. Another big change I noticed in Luna is the improved Internet connection. My mobile Internet wouldn't even work last time we were there. Now, if I were to stay there for months, I would have been able to work. And who wouldn't want to stay with a view like this? So hopefully you get to see some of these pictures in the video. A couple things to note. Number one, the Internet, even in these remote places, is so much better. Now, if you're having Internet problems with your ofs, maybe consider like talking to them about options for Internet. Number two, you notice what I just read was pretty dang perfect English. And it's not that hard to find people with really great English in the Philippines. I have quite a few who work for me. The one who wrote this is just one of them. And yep, she's amazing, but it's not that hard to find people like her. Now, let's talk about vacation. So I get this quite a bit. People tell me this all the time. We struggle to get our ofs to take a vacation, which is correct. And this person has worked for me for probably 11, 12 years now, something like that. And so she'll take vacations. When people start working, they do not want to take a vacation. And it will probably take years before they're willing to take a vacation because they just want to keep their job. They want to do a good job. They want to make you happy. They want. They don't want the risk of losing their job. You can help them by encouraging them to take breaks to take vacations. A lot of employment in the Philippines won't do that. They won't encourage it. They don't want people taking breaks or vacations. Obviously, it's healthy to take to take a vacation, so you'll need to encourage it. Can encourage by paying for a vacation, which we do on occasion. You can encourage it by offering unlimited paid time off, which is what we do. In the end, I don't have a lot to offer in terms of getting your ofs to take vacation because you just kind of don't want to. Not that they don't want to. They want to go on vacation. They're worried and so you can help by reassuring them you should go on a trip. It will be helpful to you. I recently had one of my teammate members who has not been doing great work for a little while and I said something to him and his response was, yeah, since my dad died last year, I've really been kind of in a funk. I'm not getting the same. I don't have the same motivation as I did. I said, hey, maybe you need a vacation. And he said, yeah, that might be. It might be good for me. Maybe I'll go to Korea. He said he had tickets to Korea later this year, but he wasn't going to use it. So yeah, maybe, maybe go to Korea. So I said, yeah, great, go next week. Buy tickets and go next week. And then he sent me the receipt for the tickets and we paid for his flights, which, you know, he wasn't expecting that and I expect it'll be good for him to get away. Just pay attention. You have real people that have real needs in life. This guy's amazing and he's struggling and doesn't is worried about taking a vacation and all it took was a little bit of encouragement and hopefully he'll have a good time.
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