John Jonas's Filipino virtual assistant Twinkle got septic shock and spent two weeks in the ICU. Instead of pressuring her to work, Jonas told her to heal and her job would wait. He talks about why that matters for remote workers in crisis.
Questions this video answers
Episode 274.
May 8, 2023.
Twinkle.
Her infection progressed to septic shock and she was brought into the ICU.
About two weeks in the hospital (ICU).
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online. Filipino specialists. And this is episode 274. How do you handle when an OFS gets sick? So when my OFS, Twinkle, which is her nickname, and there's a whole big thing about nicknames that I won't get into this time, but we'll talk about another time. So when Twinkle got sick last year, our first reaction was to encourage her to get better. Oh, I'm so sorry. We hope you get better. Go see a doctor. We provide health insurance for this. Her first reaction was, oh, oh, no. I'm gonna lose my job. I had no idea this was her big worry. And it was. It was such a big worry. I mean, she's just now telling us this. So it was such a big worry for her that she put off telling us for a really long time that she was sick. Here's what she said. One of the downsides of working online is that a job can be easily taken from you. And this was a big fear for me. Last year, in the midst of a lockdown in our city because of COVID 19, I started feeling sick because being sick in a pandemic is the worst. Going to the doctor is not easy. I had to get a clearance from our barangay, which is the village, before any doctor would agree to see you. And if you have a fever, which I did because I had an infection, they would cancel your appointment. It was because of this that I wasn't able to get the treatment that I should have. Earlier this year, my infection grew so much worse that my body had gone into septic shock. I was brought into the ICU and had a very scary two weeks in the hospital. But what's scarier was being not able to work and knowing that I won't be able to work for a couple of weeks more. It was a huge possibility that I'll be out of a job, but it wasn't the case. John and Dan reached out as soon as they found out what happened and assured me that I can take time to heal and get my strength back. They reassured me that I have to focus on getting better and that I still have a job waiting for me when I'm ready. This was a big deal, especially when I've never, ever met them personally. It was a testament to how John cares for us. His OFS and his care is a guarantee that he won't just give up on us just because we're not in a good place. He trusts us enough to pick ourselves back together and come back. I've always thought that working from home is great but having a boss who cares and trusts you is the best. So that's what she writes. So for us we don't have deadlines of mission critical work that like has to be done at a certain time or has to be done right now. For us it's fine if she misses a month of work either someone else can cover for her or whatever she's working on depending on who it is that get sick can just wait for a month and yes that's crappy and yeah no I don't like it and it's not the best situation but it's still a person it's still a human that is sick and the work stuff is just work. So if you have mission critical work and things that have to get done on a specific deadline how do you handle nofs who gets sick? What do you do? Email me johnnlinejobs ph.
