The REAL Cost of Hiring Online Filipino Specialists—Fair Pay or Exploitation?

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 435. Are you exploiting your OFS? So I don't get this very often, but occasionally I see nasty comments online when we post something about, like, the last. The last podcast episode where I talked about Deej and Day. Sometimes I get some comments that say, oh, you're exploiting these people or you're a slave owner or something like that. Something silly. And not that I want to dismiss their comments, even though I think they're silly. Typically, I find those people making those kinds of comments don't. They don't know the situation. They don't really know. They just. They really just want to raise hell online. And typically, also, I actually don't see the comments. Usually it's my, my team, my OFS team that sees the comments, but they let me know. And the most common thing is, how is that, how can you pay these people while you're living in the US or their houses don't look so nice. It looks like they're living in squalor or they should be paid U.S. wages. And in the end, that, like, the common theme of this is, how can you say that outsourcing the Philippines is ethical when you're paying them much less than a US Worker makes? And so I want to address that. I want to give some statistics. When I asked my team this, they said the cost of living, that's like, the main thing is the cost of living is significantly different in the Philippines. So they went and found me a whole bunch of statistics. Let me tell you what they found. So they said the cost of living in the US is 130% higher than in the Philippines, not including rent. Cost of living, including rent in the US is 190% higher than in the Philippines. Rent prices in the US are 500% higher than in the Philippines. Restaurant prices in the US are 270% higher. Grocery prices in the US are 113% higher than in the Philippines. And so my OFS found these numbers online. In my experience, and actually in my son's experience, he just recently returned from living in the Philippines for two years as a missionary. The gap is actually much bigger than what these numbers suggest. So, for example, he says, yeah, you can eat in a restaurant for $1. That's super easy. Well, where I live, to eat out at a restaurant probably costs you 17 to $20 to eat out. Restaurant prices, this says 270% higher. I would say like 10 times higher. And across the board in my judgment. My guess is that the actual cost of living is quite a bit less than what these are saying. But the quantity of difference isn't the point here. The point here is the cost of living in the Philippines is so much less. And so the salary that you're paying, which, that small salary that you're paying, really, it goes a long way and it can be life changing for them. Often that salary lets them move up the socioeconomic ladder. It lets them move into a better neighborhood, it lets them send their kids to better schools where those kids are going to get a better education, they're going to grow up and have a better chance at getting a better job than they otherwise would have. Often it lets them buy their family's first home or first car or, or maybe even the first time of sending their kids to school. And I don't want to advocate for the, the white savior complex, but we see it so much so when people leave comments saying, oh, their house doesn't look so nice, or that they're just driving a motorcycle, well, you didn't see them before they had a job working online. You didn't see the house. And typically it's a step up now because they're making more than they would have before. Not only that, they're also taking care of their family, which was often not an option for people in the past. Which brings me to a second point, that there are just not that many jobs in the Philippines. And in some locations in the country, there just aren't jobs. My son served his mission on this island, Marinduque, and he had some really talented, educated people that they're just there. He said there just are not jobs here. So either you're, you're a farmer or there's not another option for you. And so for those people, despite their education, despite their, their talent, either they move away from their family and go work on in another part of the country, or they work out of the country or they have an online job. So it's not always a choice of being exploited by you, which is what people want me to believe, and some other job. It's the choice of no job or a job working online with a reasonable wage and staying at home with your family. A lot of the time that other job option didn't exist. There was no other job option. That's not a thing for a lot of people. Not in every case, but in a lot of cases. So now let me make some caveats to all of this because I don't want you to go into this thinking, oh wow, yeah, I can, I can do whatever I want with these people because they, their other option is to not have a job. Don't exploit people. Don't underpay the people that you're working with. Pay them fairly and recognize the cost of living differences. But in any case, give them a job. Find someone and give them a job and pay them and actually let me, let me rephrase that. Find someone and bring them into your business. Make them part of your business. Don't just give them a job to do. Make them a part of your business in your life. Pay them, pay them well, but let them help you grow because in the end, well, that's what it's about for you and that's what they want. There's not an enemy relationship here where you're exploiting someone and they're barely getting by. You want to have someone to help your business grow, they want to have a job to help your business grow. It's a really good relationship most of the time changing their lives and is a side effect of you giving them a job. So not only is this not exploiting people, typically it's raising them in the socioeconomic status typically it's bringing them out of poverty. It's also changing their kids lives and demographic for the future where those kids are going to have way more opportunities now because they've watched this. They know what's going on. They know what they need to do to get a better job than what they previously had the option of doing. So you're doing good for them. You're helping your business grow. It's a win, win and actually there's quite a note, quite a number of other wins in there. The list is too long for this. It's really a win, win, win, win, win situation. Hire someone in the Philippines. Hire an ofs. You can find amazing talent if you are. If this is the first episode you're listening to, listen to the previous episode just for a reference on some of the talent you can find and want to know what a fair salary is. Check out onlinejobs ph salaries. There's a salary guide there where we'll talk or we'll show you. Like for a beginner, here's a salary range for like the starting work. For an intermediately skilled person, here's a salary range for all these different all these different roles. For an expert, here's the range for all these different types of industries and roles. Onlinejobs ph salaries.