Ep. 357: Why would an OFS hide their pregnancy?

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 357. Why would an OFS hide their pregnancy? So pregnancy is an interesting thing in the Philippines where it can cause people to quit jobs, it can cause people to lose jobs. It is not treated the same way as in the US and we are actually dealing with this right now. I have two people, well, two people that I know of on my team that are pregnant and I just found out from people, not them, that they were pregnant. I found out from one of their husbands and I found out from a team member who said, oh, she's really sick because she's pregnant. Well, we had no idea. Neither of them told us that. So let me read you this email from Luis who is a customer on pregnancy and maternity leave and culture. Luis says, we took on a cost tracking VA about 3 months ago and she is amazing in all caps. She is working with our bookkeeper va who is also amazing in all caps and they have been great at creating systems and processes. We catch up frequently for a team huddle and have good culture between us. Our cost tracking VA hadn't shown up for a meeting the last two days and was unresponsive to messages so I was a little concerned that something had happened. She reached out today to say that she went into early labor. I am gutted as I didn't even know she was pregnant. So I'm trying to manage my emotions around while she wasn't upfront and honest and now obviously scrambled to deal with keeping her work front going while she's recovering. She asked for a week leave from work which is more than fine. But I really confused. As a mom of three myself, I had months off work after having a baby. As you deal with the new baby changes which are life changing, my questions are, is it something Filipino women typically try to hide from their employers? Do they not spend time with their babies when they are born? My only thinking behind is that she needed the work and money and then was afraid to be honest with an employer for fear that they wouldn't hire her. Would love to know your thoughts to help me understand the culture better. So I definitely have some thoughts. But first let me go to Julia because this was a little bit over my head and so I turned to her her for answers. So let me just read to you what Julia says about this because it's interesting. So first, something Filipino women typically try to hide from their employer. She says not typically but there are circumstances that would make Filipinos hesitate to tell their employers about their pregnancy. One, if their previous workplace isn't friendly to pregnant women or people with families. I know people who quit their jobs because of this. And yeah, I can easily see them being scared that you are not going to be friendly to a pregnant person because they're going to have to take time off. Okay. Two, if the employee is hiding the pregnancy from family and friends. The Philippines is still a mostly Catholic, patriarchal country. Pregnancy out of wedlock doesn't carry as much stigma as before, but it can still cause issues. If the family is very conservative. Maybe they're afraid of telling their employer about the pregnancy because it risks other people knowing about it. Then Julia continues. Do they not spend time with their babies when they are born? She says, we do. In fact, the Philippines has good laws regarding maternal and paternal leave. But if we need the money, we will want to return it to work as soon as possible. So let me just go into this really quickly. In the Philippines, maternity leave is 105 days. So it's really long. And it is paid by the government. If they are current on their SSS payments, their Social Security, the government pays them their wage during their maternity leave and they know how much to pay them based off how much they're paying into sss. But when we have experienced this over the years, typically people do not want to take 105 days off. They want to take a week off. Like Luis just said, her OFS said, she said, I'll be back in a week. And Luis is like, well, I know this takes months. Well, yeah, but if you can double dip during this time and get paid by the government for your maternity leave and you're working at home, so it allows you to get your work done and still get paid by your foreign employer, well, that's really amazing, especially with a new baby and all the costs that come with it. So is your OFS typically going to take 105 days off? No, that would be super rare. We have never experienced that. We usually find they want to come back to work within a couple weeks. One, because they want to double dip, but two, because they want to contribute. They don't want to feel like a dead weight to the company where they're taking months and months off. Now, just so you know, for us, we pay them during that time, so they're probably triple dipping. They're taking the time off, we're paying them their salary and the government's paying them their maternity leave. That's Fine by me. We want to make their lives better. And since they're working from home, they probably feel like they can manage having the baby and doing their work at home because they're sitting. It's not like they're up and as a cashier in a grocery store or something like that. So now let me turn back to why they would not tell you about this, because I can think of a number of reasons. Yep. Typically in the Philippines, Filipinos don't hide it because you can't really hide pregnancy. It's very visible, but with you, you would never see it. And so, yeah, they're not sure when to bring it up. They're not sure how to bring it up. And they're probably worried that you're going to be upset because they're going to be missing time from work. This goes along with the same reason why most Filipinos do not take paid time off. They don't take time off away from work because they don't want you to see them as a slacker. They don't want you to see them as a problem. They want to be contributing and doing good work and completing their tasks. And they know the business has work that needs to get done. So, yeah, they could hide this out of fear. And fear is the most likely reason for them to hide it. If they fear either feeling like they're a dead weight or potentially maybe they fear you firing them because if. Because maybe it's easier to fire someone and hire someone new rather than have that time off. So maybe they think they're going to hide it all the way through and. And then within a week, they're going to be back to work. And then you never even knew that it happened, which it's certainly possible that has happened to us over the years where we didn't know that someone was pregnant and they had a baby and they came back to work and we never even knew. Now we. We have a pretty good relationship with our people, but I guess maybe it's not as good as I think, or maybe. Maybe there's more at play here than even I'm thinking of. So Julia says it's not something they would typically hide. But, yeah, I have two people on my team right now, like I said, that are pregnant, and I did not find out from that person that they are pregnant. In fact, I had to approach one of my team members, one of my people, about his work quality, and he said, I'm so sorry, my wife is pregnant and I'm trying to keep up on her tasks. Also, she also works for us, and she's also really, really great. And I was like, well, that's really not. That's not how this works. But he's trying to make up for her and for him and take care of the kids and deal with the household chores and do all this stuff. And she hadn't said anything to us about being pregnant. It would have been really nice to know. Now, that'll tell you a little bit about how likely they are to hide their pregnancy. It's happening to me, it's happening to Louise. It's not uncommon. So when this happens to you, don't be super shocked. But you can also make this easier on them and on yourself by gaining their trust. Gaining trust from your workers is a really big deal. One of the biggest ways you can do it is by providing training. Another really big way is by being nice. And I know that sounds silly, but Filipinos just want to be valued. They want to know that they are valued. And having you being an understanding boss goes a really long way toward accomplishing that and gaining their trust. It.