How I Fix Poor Work From My OFS (Without Losing Them)

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 427, how I respond to Poor Work. So today I want to talk about poor work that gets done from the Philippines and how I respond to it and how some of you respond to it and just kind of what has worked for me. So what inspired this was recently I found some really poor work from someone on my team who is doing SEO. Not that they wrote bad content or something like that. I mean, their writing is fantastic, although their English is perfect and the way they write is just really, really great. It was the links that he inserted in the writing where he linked with click here rather than online jobs, ph review or something like that. He linked with click here instead of keywords. That made sense when trying to get a page to rank. Just nothing about that made sense. And I was so frustrated with it. And so I started a video of feedback. And when I started it, I was determined to do it nicely. And I wasn't doing this publicly. I was going to send this just to him. And then as I got into the video, I started it out nice and I found the click here and then I started scrolling and clicking and seeing other things and it just snowballed and I got really frustrated and I was not nice in the video and I actually found work from someone else who wasn't very good. And I ended up posting the video not just for him, but for other people on the team to see. And I really kind of chastised him. It was. It was. It was not good. And when I sent it, so, I mean, I stopped my recording and I sent it and posted it to the people on the team. And I said, hey, this is going to be rough. You're not going to like this. Then I sent the video and I did some explaining in text, also not in text message, but in our project management system. I explained more and then the last thing I did was I said, hey, look, I like you and your job is not in jeopardy. I know you're smart, I know you're talented, I know you're intelligent. I just want you to own up to the poor work that you've done and take responsibility and fix it and get better in the future. So his response to this came really pretty quickly. I'm going to read it to you. So his response was, I understand your frustrations earlier and deeply apologize for the poor linking strategies in my recent work. I genuinely feel bad about this and want to make it right. I am in fact ashamed of how poorly I did it it. Over the next days, I will thoroughly audit all my posts to ensure they have the correct links and use more appropriate phrases. Thank you for your understanding and patience. So I believe there are two reasons why he didn't just run off and disappear. Because I censured him. It was not my best moment. Reason number one is because I believe I hired well. I mean, when I hired him, I knew he was good, I knew he was very intelligent, he was very skilled, he was talented. I. I had a pretty good idea of who I was hiring. And number two, the reason I don't think he disappeared was because I've spent time praising him. I've spent time giving him feedback, I've spent time giving him training despite his prior SEO experience, despite, I mean really years of experience. And even with that years of experience and knowledge, he's still making these stupid, silly mistakes that really, really poor quality. And I think he didn't disappear because had spent time with him. He knew that I cared. And when someone knows you care, they start to trust you. And so when I got mad at him, he said he apologized, he owned up to it, and he fixed it. And it's been really great since. Actually, this was a couple months ago when this happened. And so he's done a lot of work since and it's been really great. And actually I'm not super disappointed that this happened, that he did some really poor work and I got to correct him on it. And here's why. So often in the Philippines, they don't really know your expectations. And not that I hadn't given expectations because I had. I mean, I had been pretty clear with my expectations. But now he knows, and every on the team knows that their job is to do great work and not lots of work, which Filipinos often fall back on quantity over quality, which is at least to me is the wrong way that I want this job being done. And so I got to emphasize that. I got to let them know that they're not to be giving me something mediocre. They're not to be turning in crappy work and just hope that it passes or hope that, like, oh, well, I'm okay with it. It's not their problem to make sure it's great. It's my problem to make sure it's great. Now. No, now they know that it's their job to make sure that their work is great. And that's kind of a cultural thing in the Philippines where, like, if it's not your responsibility. If you're not the final word on it, then you don't have to make sure that it's all perfectly done. That's someone else's job. That's a cultural thing. But you can correct it and you can make it better, partly by talking with them, partly by gaining their trust, partly by working with them and helping them understand that you care about. Okay, so let me bring this back to another reason why I. Why I wanted to talk about this today. So I often get emails from people saying, oh, the person I hired is so amazing. They have done really, really great work. But then recently their work declined and what do I do about it? So to me, what has always helped solve that problem is ask them, ask them why their work is declining. Here's where how you do this matters. At this point, when I do this, I will almost always assume something is my fault. Like your productivity being down is my fault. So I notice your productivity is down. I'm wondering what I have done to cause it to go down. Or I'm wondering what's going on in your work that's causing it to be slow, or is there something wrong that is making the quality bad? Is this really difficult? Am I assuming too much? Am I What's going on here? And the key there to me is not blaming them saying, oh, you're lazy. Because that's usually not the case. Usually something else is going on. And in this case, with what? In what? In the situation I just described to you. I had already given him feedback, I already gave him training, I already talked with him. I spent a bunch of time with him. His work quality hadn't declined. He was just doing something poorly. The rest of his work, his content writing was really, really great. His content, the quantity of work was really great. It was this one thing, right? So when you notice something going on, ask them, because they're aware, usually that they're being lazy. They're aware, or maybe they're not being lazy. Maybe they just have something else really, really affecting them and they're unable to think through it properly right now. And usually saying something is the best way to solve this. Firing them is. I mean, it's a solution for you. It's not a very good one for them. It's also not a very good one for you, usually, because then now you have to go through the recruiting process again. If you went through the recruiting process and found someone great, you already have someone great. There's just a problem that needs to be solved. And my experience is if you're willing to work through this dip in their work quality and willing to help them get back up to what you want to be for this is really going to build long term loyalty and long term knowledge in this person who you've brought them into your business, you're helping them work their work quality declines. Now you bring them back up to speed and now they know more and they know your expectations better. And the further you get along, the less you have to teach them. And then when you bring someone else in, they're going to help push that quality expectation onto whoever else is there because they know they've been through it with you already. So if you're experiencing poor work quality from people recognize there's a solution to it. Usually that solution is asking them. That solution is also building their trust in you, helping gain their trust in you so that when a problem happens, they don't run away, they don't want to disappear, they want to keep their job working with you because they like you as a boss, you're a good, trustworthy employer.