John Jonas (Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast, Ep. 346) discusses how family emergencies in the Philippines commonly disrupt work for online Filipino specialists (OFS). He recounts two anecdotes — Karen (quit job in Cebu to care for her sister) and Kale (took paid leave after his mother fell ill and died) — to illustrate cultural expectations that family comes first and that grieving requires substantial time. Jonas advises employers to respond with empathy: allow paid leave, be prepared for absences (especially early in a working relationship), and recognize that some candidates may decline offers rather than risk losing face by requesting weeks off.
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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 346, family emergencies and OFS disappearing. So a couple episodes ago, I talked about Karen and how she had a family emergency and had to leave her job in Cebu, quit her job in Cebu, move back home and take care of her sister. Family emergencies are common in the Philippines. And what she did, quit her job and leave is a pretty common response to this. So recently, One of my OFs, Kale, asked me to take some time off because his mother was sick. So he goes to take care of her in the hospital. She ends up passing away and he has to take more time off. Which, of course our response is, yes, take whatever time you need. I gave him paid leave so he could focus on grieving and settle whatever needs to be settled. He can come back whenever he's ready. Kale has worked for us for years. In fact, he was one of the first people we hired. He's never taken advantage of our paid time off policy. And when his mom was in the hospital, he sent me a photo of him and her in the hospital so that I would know what was happening. Now he's going through a lot, and the least I can do is support him. This is. This is normal. Like, bad things happen and people in the Philippines have to take care of their family. And so just to illustrate this point even further and kind of the knowledge that I've come to understand over the years that I didn't understand, okay, so years ago, I recruited someone and emailed them for their first task, and they didn't respond. And so I emailed them again for the first task the next day. So she didn't respond to. But she had her sister respond to me and say, I'm sorry, she can't work, our mom died, so she won't be able to work for you. And I was like, no, I just. I just recruited someone good. I know I recruited someone good. And so I just said, no, it's okay, I'll wait. You go take care of whatever you need with your mom, and I'll just wait for you to start. And her sister responded again. At least she said she was her sister and said, no, sir, she won't be able to work for you. Sorry. And at the time, I was like, dude, that's so weird. You just got a job and you won't take that job because you have, I don't know, you have like a day or two. You need you need something. I don't know. And I just didn't understand, and I was frustrated, and I didn't know what the culture around helping family was. Now I understand. Now I understand that a death in the family requires a week, two weeks, weeks of being there to help and take care of things. And if you're just starting a new job, asking for weeks off doesn't seem like the right thing. It's embarrassing. It would cause you to lose face. And so it's just easier to say, yeah, sorry, I can't take the job, than to say, oh, yeah, I need weeks of taking care of my mom before I can come and actually start work. Now, I don't actually know if that's what happened when I hired this person. I don't know if maybe they just used it as an excuse because they realized they had taken on too much and I was going to ask for too much from them. I don't think that's the case because I was pretty thorough in my recruiting. But it's possible that they used a family member getting sick or dying as an excuse to walk away from the job. So. So here's the takeaway. Number one. Bad stuff happens. And Kale is going through a lot right now, and we've given him as much time as he wants, which will affect our handheld hiring product, onlinejobs Ph handheldhiring, because Kale runs it, and that's okay. If it affects our business a little bit, you know, that's okay. His life and his grieving is more important than what we do. Another takeaway is if this happens to you at the beginning of a working relationship, consider what's happening. Either they've used it as an excuse to walk away, in which case, well, you know, you might be thankful that they used it as an excuse to get away early, rather than being months down the road and figuring out, oh, yeah, this isn't going to work between us, or if something actually has happened at the beginning of a working relationship, you now know they're going to need weeks off. And maybe they're not going to be willing to come back to work because it's too much potential for being embarrassed. There's too much losing face in the starting of a job and having to take weeks off immediately. But if you recruited well, you can try. You can say, hey, I'm willing to wait for you. I'm willing to wait weeks. I understand the culture. I understand that you need to take a bunch of time off. I will just start when you get back. Don't even worry about it until you're ready to start work again. You have a job with me. You'll need to feel out the situation. I don't really know, but in all cases, try to have empathy and be compassionate for the people that you're working with.
