How All Saints & All Souls Day Affect Your Filipino VA’s Work Schedule

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 211, All Saints and All Souls Day. So I know this is a little bit late, but I still think this is valid to talk about. Recently we had Halloween here in the US which is my second least favorite day of the year. And I'm not gonna get into it a ton. It's just not my thing. My least favorite day of the year is obviously April 15, tax day. Who could like that? But this isn't about Halloween or Tax Day. This is about All Saints Day and All Souls day. So recently, November 1, All Saints Day and November 2 was All Souls Day in the Philippines. And All Saints Day was a special non working holiday. All Souls Day was a special working holiday. So I know that the special holidays can be confusing in the Philippines. So in 2023, the Philippines government got rid of the special non working holiday. And so we won't see that again next year. But in 2022, it's still there. So you can kind of think of special holidays as school holidays where a special working day kids may still have that day off of school and so parents may need to have some time off to take care of their kids. Special non working days. Parents are probably going to have the time off, but it's not guaranteed. It's not like a. It's not like Christmas where everybody is off. So All Saints Day and All Souls Days are days when Filipinos honor their deceased relatives. So they go to the cemetery, they light candles, they often have pictures of them. It's super similar to Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. And most schools, elementary or high schools, schedule a break around this time so the kids and the teachers can participate in the traditional. That's why the government made these special holidays this year. Add to that that travel restrictions have been lifted this year, which to you and me may not seem maybe a surprise, but the Philippines is still under a mask mandate. They have had Covid really, really draw out. Last year they were still under fully restricted travel. So this year this is kind of a big deal. Especially when All Saints Day and All Souls Day fall on a Tuesday and Wednesday. When the government kind of recognized this like a week before, they actually made the 31st a special holiday. So it ended up being Saturday, Sunday, which are October 29th and 30th, and then Monday's the 31st. They made that a special holiday a week before because they realized, oh, nobody has traveled in a long time. And so the first, November 1st and November 2nd, which are Tuesday and Wednesday, everybody wants to take these off. So now there's a full five days. And the government did this kind of last minute because that's how they roll in the Philippines with their holidays, which is really kind of cool, actually, that the government tries to take care of the people with holidays. Not super great for business owners, but. So whether or not you approved this leave for your workers, it's kind of in the past now, but just. Just recognize this is not an uncommon situation where the government will say, oh, here are the holidays that are coming up like a week before that will happen this coming year with Ramadan, where it's not exactly decided ahead of time. So another thing that Filip do during All Saints and All Souls Days is they go and clean the gravestones of their deceased relatives, which this hasn't happened in a couple years, so they're probably pretty anxious to get this done. I wish that we celebrated Halloween like they celebrate All Saints and All Souls Days and Dia de los Muertos, where we. Where we honor our deceased ancestors, rather than going out and demanding candy or playing a trick on someone. It really kind of bothers me.