John Jonas explains how to manage remote staff across the Philippines time difference. He shares how asking a Filipino employee to work his hours backfired until he switched her to nights, then walks through the hour offsets (Eastern +13, Pacific +16) and how to use overlap time for feedback and training instead of fixing their work yourself.
Chapters
How to make the Philippines time difference work for you. So I understand why people who they hire their first ofs, they want that person to work on their time zone, on their hours. It makes things easier, it makes scheduling a meeting easier, it makes training easier, it makes a lot of things easier. So the first time I did this when I hired someone, the agency said to the agency who I use said to me, do you want them to work on your hours? And I was like, I didn't really know that was an option, but if it is, then yeah, that'd be great. Like that'd be sweet to have them working at the same time as me because I just assumed they would work their normal hours. It would be during my night. So the guy starts working for me and a couple weeks in he sends me an email and says, sir, this is really, really hard working at night, I'm not sleeping well during the day. It's affecting my family, it's affecting my health, it's affecting my productivity. I'm not working super well for you. Is there any way that I could work my daytime hours and sleep at night? And I was like, oh sure, no problem. That's, that's a no brainer. Nothing that you're doing is like urgent. We don't need to be online at the same time. That's totally fine. The problem with having someone in the Philippines work your time zone is if they're not used to it, it is likely going to affect their health, their productivity, their work quality, it's going to affect them. But usually there is a way to make this work to your advantage. So I just want to show you like the time difference between where you are and the Philippines. So right now it's January and we're on daylight savings time. So if you're in the east coast, if you're on eastern time zone, Eastern daylight time, you are 13 hours behind the Philippines. And so if it's 9pm on Monday, then it is 10am on Tuesday for them. So they're a day ahead of you or they're 13 hours ahead of you. So if it's 9am on Monday Eastern Time, right now it is 10pm Monday the same day because it's only 9am for you, it's 10pm for them, but 13 hours ahead. So as you go back Central Time, they're 14 hours ahead. Mountain Time, they're 15 hours ahead. Pacific Time, they're 16 hours ahead. So here's what that means. If it's 9pm Tuesday night, it is 1pm Wednesday afternoon. In the Philippines. So if it's 9pm In Los Angeles, it is 1pm on the next day in the Philippines, 9pm Monday, it's, it's 1pm Tuesday there and then for those of you in the UK, it's an eight hour difference. They are in the Philippines, they are eight hours ahead of you. So it's 9pm in London, it is 5am the next day. Depending on where you live. Most people have someone in the Philippines working like while you sleep. And if you're in Australia, that's a different story, but they're on the same time zone as you. So here's what I do during my days and this took me a really long time to figure out. I respond to the reports that I get from my people, I respond to their questions, I give feedback on the work that they have done. I give instructions, I give training, I give new tasks. The thing that I don't do is I don't touch the work that they're supposed to be doing. I do not correct mistakes, I don't fix things that were done wrong. I don't fit finish things that were left undone. I don't do it. And this took me a long time to figure out. I am more productive in teaching someone else to do the thing that got left undone and having them complete it themselves because that thing is probably going to happen again or something similar is going to happen again. So I'm more productive in just taking the time to correct, give instructions, give feedback, give tasks than I am in fixing the things that they do. So this took me a really long time. For a long time I wanted to like it and get it done right now so that it was done. And what I found was I'm not making good progress in my business because I'm fixing things that I shouldn't be fixing. Often they didn't finish it or something because I left out a critical piece of instruction or something that they couldn't figure out without me. And so if I give that instruction, they finish the work it gets done for me. I don't have to do it. And then I found I'm just way, way more productive at things that push the business forward. When I don't touch the work that they're doing when something goes wrong, I figure out how to work on systems better, like how do I make this system work better or I figure out how to give better training and better feedback on that specific thing. Or I work on other important tasks like making sales or managing the processes that we have going on or managing new processes or creating a new process. So the thing that I don't do is I don't touch, I don't touch their work. So what's great about the time difference is that when I do my work, there's no there to distract me. Nobody is bugging me for advice on this thing. Nobody is saying, hey, can I talk to you? Can I chat? Can I? Nobody does that, right? None of, none of my people, because they're all in the Philippines, so they're not bothering me. I'm very, very efficient with my work. Now if you do need to talk to someone, which I have pretty well conditioned my team, that we don't need to talk, not live, but if you do. What I've also found is that almost always my work time overlaps with their work time at some point during the day. So if it's 9am My time, it's 10pm Their time. Some of them are up and working still or getting started working because they like to work late. If it's 5pm My time, it's 6am Their time the next day. And a bunch of them are up starting early because they got up at 4:30. Just because the sun rises differently there. If you want someone to work on your time, you can definitely do it. You can get someone who is already used to working the night shift. There's lots of call centers in the Philippines. Lots of people are used to working the night shift. When you recruit someone, I suggest you find someone who's already used to it. It will make the transition. There's not even the transition anymore. It'll make them working for you at night way, way, way easier.
