24 Nov 2025 · 4 min
John Jonas covers gift options for Filipino outsourced staff: local marketplaces like Lazada and Shopee, digital subscriptions, or cash. He recommends posting jobs in January rather than December, when candidates delay starts for holidays.
Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast, the podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas, and this is episode 41, giving personalized gifts to your OFS. So my daughter usually plugs her AirPods in in the kitchen so that she doesn't forget them when she gets up for school in the morning. And it kind of bugs me because she usually plugs her AirPods in along with her keys and leaves her keys right on the counter with her wallet. And the keys and wallets are together in this big jumbled thing with a lanyard around it. And then usually also her big giant water bottle that she has with it. And she usually leaves it right in the middle of a big prep space in the kitchen. Prep space, whatever. She's such a good girl that it's fine. But this morning, she comes down, she eats her breakfast. She's all ready to leave. She's walking out the door, grabbing her stuff. Where are my AirPods? They're not here. Where are they? She goes running around the house looking for her AirPods. I didn't take them, but I was glad they weren't there because I hate those things. And she's pretty good about it. Although we've had our times in the past where she was. She had them in her ears continuously. But I hate them. I hate that they're in your ears constantly. I hate that it's separating you from the people around you. We just live in a different world than how things used to be. And I'm not saying it's bad. It's just different. And speaking of different, my daughter, she's not super into, like, digital gifts for Christmas. She does. She. We have apple music, a family thing, and she listens to it, and that's good. And she wants bike stuff for Christmas. But in the Philippines, that's not super simple. So I get asked all the time, how do I give gifts to someone in the Philippines? How do I ship it? Well, shipping to the Philippines is not simple, so that's not a good option. So here's a couple options. One, you can use Lazada.comPH or two, Shopee PH s h o p. And those are options like, you buy something to ship it to their house, you get their address. Right now, though, it's probably too late for that for Christmas because it's too close to Christmas. So when people ask me, I usually say, send cash, because cash is easy. And I'll just preface this by saying I'm a terrible gift giver. Like I'm just not good at it. I don't like to give gifts. I don't. The thinking process is for gifts is really, really hard for me. And so I just say give cash. I send it with their salary, it's done. That's it. But I also know that's impersonal and so maybe the Shopee and Lazada route is another way. But for Christmas right now you're probably too late. So here's a couple other ideas that my OFS told me. So if you know them and you know their likes and interests, it's really helpful. So like if they're a music person, you could get them a subscription to Spotify for a year or maybe an itunes gift card if they have an iOS device or something like that. If they're a reader, you can maybe find their Amazon books wish list and buy them some books off of their wishlist. Maybe they have a Kindle or something. Or you can buy them from Lazada.com and ship them there. Or Amazon will probably ship books there pretty easily. If they're a gamer, then how about a game from Epic or Steam? All these things are like reasonable and they're easy to do and they'll certainly get there in time for the holiday because it's all digital. By the way, none of this is required. So do not think that because I'm talking about this, you need to buy gifts for your people in the Philippines. I just get asked this a lot so I'm answering it. I ask my team, how do I answer this? They gave me a bunch of ideas in addition to my answer of send cash. That's the obvious answer. That's it. So just so you know, kind of a PS on this, now's not a great time to hire someone in the Philippines. They are very hesitant. So I've done this before. I was like hiring someone in mid December and they're. Every single person I talked to was like, when do you want me to start? I'm like, well, I want you to start tomorrow. And people are like, oh, sorry, I can't take this job because the holidays is. There's just so much expected of them. So I'll talk about. I'll talk more about the holidays in coming episodes. Just be aware that if you're going to hire someone mid and late December, probably not the best time, you can certainly still find people. But I would recommend waiting till January to post your job.
