John Jonas explains how to give raises to online Filipino specialists and virtual assistants. Start with small incremental increases, then move to annual raises of $25–$100 or 5–10%. Consider mid-year bonuses or larger raises as alternatives, and treat them the way you'd want to be treated.
Chapters
How do pay raises work? When hiring an ofs. After an OFS or a virtual assistant has worked for you for some time, you're going to want to raise their pay and they're going to want a pay raise. So how does this work? Well, there's all kinds of ways that you can handle this. And I'm going to start from early on in the relationship to as things progress more so when I start someone, I usually start them working at less than what they want to make or less than what I think they should make. And so after a couple months, usually I'll evaluate and say like, hey, here's how much I started you at and now I'm going to raise you to where, to close to where I think you should be and we'll continue a little bit more. And then at maybe six months, I'll say, hey, now I'm going to put you out where I think you should be. So I've given them a couple raises from the beginning to six months, and that's only if I start them off low. If I start them off where I think they should be, that I'm not going to do that in the first six months after that. I typically give a raise once per year and that raise I usually do between 25 and $50 or between 5 and 10% of their salary. And so a 10% raise is a pretty good raise compared to normal jobs like in the US but. But for me, it's not as big of a deal when I'm adding $50 per month to a salary. So I usually do this in early January where I'll evaluate like, hey, I think your performance has been really, really good this year. Here's a $50 raise. Or hey, I could see getting more from you than what I am, than what I feel like I'm getting. And maybe I'll do a review with them of like, here's why I feel this way, so I'm going to give you a $25 raise right now. Or there have been times where I've said, hey, you were so good this year. Here's a hundred dollar per month raise. Another thing that I've done is in the middle of the year, I've said, hey, you're doing so well. Like, I love your work and I can see that you're loyal and you're hardworking and you're honest with me and here's a really big raise, I'm going to raise your salary quite a bit. I've done that a couple times over the years and obviously it's received really well. I'm not sure it's necessary, but I just felt like I wanted this person to make more money. Another way to handle this, maybe outside of just doing raises, is to give bonuses mid year. Like if and I've done this quite a few times. If someone's doing well, I will send a bonus at the end of the month. And like, here's an extra $100 this month just because thank you for the good work you're doing. So there's not a standard for how raises should be done. You don't have to give a raise once a year. You don't have to do a performance review. You don't have to whatever it is, whatever your job in the US does or used to do, you don't have to do that. I like to look at it as how would I like to be treated if I was in their shoes? My name is John Jonas and I wrote a book all about how to handle online Filipino specialists and I want to send that book to you for free. It's titled the Outsourcing Lever and if you go to outsourcinglever.com I will ship it to you if you'll pay the shipping cost. I've already paid for the book. In the book I cover all the cultural things that you should know about. I cover how to hire and how to fire and how to handle raises. And I had how to communicate and communication issues. You'll deal with all kinds of things that you should know that I've learned since I hired my first VA virtual assistant in the Philippines in 2005. OutsourcingLever.com.
