John Jonas (Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast, episode 367) gives practical, humane guidance for laying off an Online Filipino Specialist (OFS). Key recommendations: notify the worker as soon as possible, write positive reviews if they performed well, offer severance where feasible (notably paying prorated 13th-month pay in the Philippines), and — when possible — provide paid notice (e.g., 30 days) while allowing them time to search for new work. He also notes exceptions (dishonesty or safety concerns) where access may be revoked immediately.
Questions this video answers
Episode 367.
April 9, 2024.
30 days (paid; employee often relieved from work during this notice period).
13th month pay (prorated for the portion of the year worked).
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS. This is episode 367, laying off an OFS. So this is. This is never easy, right? Laying off someone, firing someone. So I got this sad email from Ali. Ali says, do you have any content or insight on how to lay off an ofs? I need to close my business and cannot afford an OFS at this time. I'm so sorry to hear that. You're not the first person to tell me this. Never fun to let someone go. It's never fun to be let go. It's even worse to fire someone, I think. So let's talk about my experience with this and my advice. So here's my advice. Number one, let them know as soon as possible that you'll be letting them go. That gives them. It gives them time to start looking for another job. Number two, if they did really well working for you, write them a positive review on onlinejobs, physical talk about them. Say why you're let, why you let them go, why they're not working for you anymore. Say it's because my business wasn't working out and they were amazing. That'll go a long, long way toward them finding another job. Number three, if you can do any severance, which in Ali's case that's probably not the case, but if you can, when you're letting someone go, if you can do any severance, go for it. So for example, the 13th month pay in the Philippines is legally required that it's still be paid to someone. If you let them go in June, you would just pay them January through June's 13th month pay. And we have a whole page onlinejobs ph 13thmonth that will describe exactly how to figure this out. So if you can pay the 13th month, here's what we have done. When letting someone go, that's just not working out. This isn't what we do if we fire someone. But laying someone off, like, well, maybe they're not that different. I guess. So if they haven't been, if they like, if they're not lying to us, if they're not stealing from us, which we haven't had anybody steal anything from us. We've had some people not be honest in their time cards. What we've done is said, hey look, we're letting you go. This is 30 months, 30, 30 days notice and we're going to pay you for the next 30 days. And since they're probably already not working out super well, for us, we will tell them, you don't need to work for the next 30 days. We want you to spend the time looking for another job that allows them to spend full time looking for another job. They going to get paid for the next 30 days. I feel good about letting them go and it's a much less difficult situation. So for me that that's what we have typically done. There are some situations where we've done other things. So for example, if someone was dishonest with us or if we feel threatened by someone, then we would immediately cut off all access before sending this email. Now I feel like this is a, I don't like doing this. It's a really bad way to run a business where like things are so bad with this person that I feel threatened by having them have access to our systems. And in like, I mean, I started hiring people in 2005. I can only think of one situation when we did this, when we like cut off all of their access and then we sent this email and said, hey, sorry, this isn't working for us, we're letting you go. And in that case, we probably didn't, I don't even remember, but we probably didn't give the full 30 days and we probably didn't pay them whatever. You'll need to do what you can do with your business. Typically we don't cut off any of their access because things are ending friendly and like it's just not working. Like either your, your, your skills aren't working or you're not being productive for us, or we can't make it work with you, something like that, that then we'll just let it go. And we've never had any issues with them like trying to do something bad to us. I have seen that occasionally, but it's super rare that I've seen that happen to someone where someone you let go then went off and was vindictive about it. I think usually that's the case because they are trying to get paid. You didn't pay them when you let them go. And they're trying to live. And so they're trying to do things to get paid. So in the end this doesn't have to be complicated. Tell them you're letting them go. Tell them, tell them, Tell them why you're letting them go. Your performance isn't what we need or our business isn't working out or the role just, we don't need the role anymore. Then if they did good work, help them find another job, write a good review. That's probably about all you need to do. You could if they're really good, you could email me johnlinejobs ph and ask if I can find them another job. Often I can. Like if you have someone good, it's not that hard for me to find another employer that wants to hire that person. If they didn't do good work, you should probably still be nice. Chances of them trying to screw you over are very, very slim. I'm not saying it can't happen or doesn't happen, it's just not.
