Why the Smartest Businesses Build Remote Teams in the Philippines

Seven reasons why the Philippines is a Giant in Business process Outsourcing this used to be India. India was the obvious Choice and in 2010 everything changed and the Philippines became the giant in the world's business process outsourcing. There are seven reasons why the Philippines is so much better than anywhere else in the world. I'm going to cover those and then I'll detail exactly what the Philippines is the best suited for. If you've thought about outsourcing business processes, this is the video to watch. So before I go into detail on the seven reasons, let me just tell you what they are and then I'm going to cover them in detail. And actually as I've been researching this, I came up with eight. The eighth one may or may not matter to you, but to half of you it's going to matter a lot. So the seven reasons are wages, the English education, the hard working and pleasing culture, the Western influence of the Philippines, the infrastructure, government backing. The last one is the non discriminatory nature of the Philippines where they don't care if they're working for a male or a female boss. That one may or may not matter to you. Let's get into the rest of this. So the number one reason why the Philippines has become the giant in business process outsourcing is wages. So the average seat in a call center in the US is 24 to 28 dollars an hour. The average seat in the Philippines is about 12 to $14 an hour. It's about half the cost and at the same time the skill level you're getting for those people is approximately the same. There's some serious cost savings to be had. Now in addition, you can actually do this a whole lot less expensively. By not hiring an agency who's managing the people and hiring them yourself, you can get people from four to eight dollars an hour rather than 12 to 14. Their skill level is the same. It's super easy to find the people with websites like onlinejobs, ph and actually you probably end up with more talent at lower cost finding them yourself versus going through an agency where they just aren't that good at finding the best people. So the cost savings is really significant and is the driving factor. This is why people look to outsource in the first place is the cost savings from US wages, Philippines wages somewhere around 2007, 2008, India's wages started getting significantly higher. Everybody across the world was going to India with their outsourcing. We all figured, oh, there's a billion people there. There must be some really good people. The more work that got sent there, the higher their wages went. And it just got to a point where their wages were competing with US wages. The Philippines has not gotten there, despite all of the world heading straight to the Philippines. Now. The second reason why the Philippines is the world's business process outsourcing giant is the Philippines has two national languages. Number one is Tagalog. Number two is English. And this is government mandated, government backed languages, Tagalog and English. Here's why. The Philippines is an island nation. There's over 7,000 islands and within those islands there are over 130 languages. Not dialects, because then there are hundreds of dialects and actually different languages. So if you're from Davao and you travel to Cebu or you're from Cebu and you travel to Manila, you can't talk to each other because in Cebu they speak Cebuano and in Manila they speak Tagalog. And those two languages are not the same. So how do they communicate with each other? English. Years ago, the government realized this problem. They also recognized with some really good forward thinking, English is progressing as the world's primary business language. So they mandated it. The government mandated that business be done in English. And so with that, English started being taught at a very young age in the Philippines many years ago. And in fact, it's so ingrained that very often science and math and history are taught in English in elementary school when they have their Filipino class that's taught in Filipino or in their local language, but it's also mixed with English. So in a country of 100 million people, you have a really, really high English speaking rate. In fact, The Philippines is 20th in the world in English speaking population. When you add to that that their English accent is actually very moderate. The change from Tagalog or Cebuanu is actually a really easy change to English. So their accent isn't as heavy as an Indian accent. You get really easy communication with, with the people you're working with. So I have about 50 people in the Philippines working for me. This is 2025 when I'm recording this video. I've only been there one time ever. That was in 2010. In 2010 when I arrived in Manila, I was shocked to find street signs were in English as I was walking down the sidewalk. Printed on the sidewalk in the concrete is English. Billboards are in English. Traffic directions are in English. English is in advertisements. English was everywhere and I was shocked. Since then I've come to realize, yep, English is super, super ingrained throughout the whole culture. It is everywhere. Unlike My second day there, I was in the hotel lobby and I hear this argument happening and for some reason it didn't really cross my mind because it was the hotel clerk and a guest, a Filipino guest, they were arguing with each other in English. And. And for some reason that didn't really cross my mind that this is odd until later when I thought back like, wow, everything is English here. Now not everything is in English, but it's so prevalent that finding fluent English speakers is very, very easy. So the number two reason why the Philippines is a business process outsourcing giant is their English communication is super, super easy. Number three reason, education. The Philippines has very, very high education rates and not just lower education, but actually university level education. They have a very high literacy rate. The literacy rate in The Philippines is 97.5%, which is exceptionally high, especially for an emerging economy. Then higher education is very highly valued in the Philippines. When you go looking for people to hire, when you're looking for a company that's hiring people, almost every person you will find has a university level education. And this isn't just like pretend university, this is actually, this is actually elementary school and middle school and high school and senior high school, which was implemented a number of years ago and then three or four years of university education. University education is so highly valued in the Philippines that often they consider someone with only a high school degree as only qualified to be a nanny or a manual labor worker. It's kind of sad, but people with just a high school education are very much looked down upon in the Philippines because of that. The drive to get a higher education is significant and the ease of finding really highly educated people is really easy and it's really easy to find highly educated people. Now the real difference this makes is that more education allows people to think more. And so when you're hiring in the Philippines, you're getting thinkers rather than just doers. The education system has created this that you're getting people who are willing to and really desire to think and contribute to your business rather than just follow exact instructions. The number four reason why outsourcing to the Philippines is so good is there are very hard working people. And in fact, not only are they very hard working as a culture, they're also culturally very pleasing. They want to make you happy, they want to work hard to make you happy. This is why you so often see them working as nurses or, or on cruise ships in service industries. And along with this very hard working, they're also very appreciative of their jobs. It's very different than in the US where someone feels entitled to a job in the Philippines. When they get a job, they're very appreciative and you combine that with their very hard working and they'll do a lot to try and keep the job that they've been given. It's a significant advantage over most other countries because you're hiring in the Philippines. The number one thing the Philippines is known for is their call centers. In 2010, they overtook India as the world's number one destination for call centers. And there's a really good reason for it. Filipinos speak really good English with a really mild accent, and they're very happy and pleasing. They're really good at solving problems. In fact, it was in 2010 when I had my first experience with a call center in the Philippines. I had a problem with an Amazon order and I called Amazon and got a call center in India. I couldn't understand him, he couldn't understand me. We were both frustrated with each other and I hung up. I immediately called back and this time got routed to a call center in the Philippines. The person was super helpful, easy to understand. They immediately solved my problem and I was done and moved on. And when I hung up, I realized Amazon was testing their call centers. Does someone in India solve the problem? India? If not, they call back and we route them to the Philippines. Do they solve the problem? The answer was no, they didn't solve the problem in India. Yes, they did solve the problem in the Philippines. And since then, the whole world has seen a massive shift in call centers from India to the Philippines. The Philippines is really, really good at this. And along with just phone calls, they're really good at tech support. Because of the highly educated workforce, they're really good at tech support. And whether this is phone based or text based, their technical support is exceptionally good. Another industry they're really good at is content development and writing. Because they're so fluent in English and because of their westernized culture, they're really good at writing content. And this includes copy or sales. Copy, social media, marketing, SEO. If it involves writing, the Philippines is really, really good at it. The next thing they're really good at is human resources and administration. Because of the highly educated workforce, A couple of things they're turning out are people who are very well versed in HR and people who are very well versed in admin services. HR would include recruiting admin services, including secretaries, data entry, executive assistants. All of these are super easy to find and easy to outsource. The Next category they're really, really good at are accounting and bookkeeping. Again, universities in the Philippines are turning out accountants and bookkeepers. They're very good at it. And because of their high power distance index, they're very trustworthy with your data. They're very respectful of authority and so they don't want to steal data. They're very respectful of protecting privacy. It's an ingrained part of the culture. So hiring an accountant or a bookkeeper overseas in the Philippines is a really good option. Then there are a whole bunch of other things that they're really good at because of their education system that maybe you wouldn't think about. And these include financial analysis or engineering design and animation, business research and analysis, web development, publishing, marketing research or market research, legal, including legal processes. In fact, my brother is an attorney in the US and he has hired an attorney in the Philippines. And he has her doing all kinds of things that lessen his workload. In the end, he. He's responsible for all the work she does all kinds of research and analysis for him. That makes his job significantly easier. Then there are a number of industries that the Philippines serves really well, including healthcare, medical billing, medical assistance. This is super common in the Philippines. E commerce and retail. The Philippines are. It is super easy to find lots of people in the Philippines who are very well versed in E commerce management, telecommunications, software and software development. The fifth reason the Philippines is a business process outsourcing giant is the Westernized culture. So for a number of reasons, the Philippines has a real affinity for Western culture, for United States culture, for Australia culture and for UK culture. So while yes, it's an Asian nation, they are very Westernized. They watch Dancing with the Stars on tv, they watch the NBA, they follow the NBA heavily. They watch American movies, they read American books. They were, they were under US control for about 50 years. Not exactly control, but under significant US influence for about 50 years after World War II. The Philippines is a very, very Westernized nation, which means as you start working with them, they get your culture, which is very different than most other Central Asia and Eastern Asian countries. Now most of the kids there and for the last 10 years they've grown up with YouTube or watching us YouTube channels. And their English is really great. They speak American slang, they understand the culture happening here. The, the Westernizing of the Philippines culture is a significant advantage when you start to work with people hoping that they will think for you and your business. Number six, infrastructure. The biggest problem with most third world countries or with most emerging economies is infrastructure. You don't have the power infrastructure, you don't have the Internet infrastructure. That means finding reliable labor is really difficult. This was true in the early 2000s in the Philippines. The government recognized the BPO industry as a significant part of their future. And they made significant investments in both power infrastructure and Internet infrastructure. When I started hiring people in the Philippines in 2005, the Internet was slow. They were working on 5 megabit to 50 megabit connections. Today, I've asked people on my team what their Internet connections are and they'll tell me it's 400 megabits a second. Well, my Internet is gig Internet, so it's a thousand megabits a second. Theirs is half of mine, which is more than my neighbors across the street. So it's very easy to find very fast and reliable Internet connections in the Philippines. In addition, cellular wireless Internet is super prevalent in the Philippines and often it's used as a backup to the normal Internet. So their working conditions are so important to them that most people that I know have a wired Internet connection and then they also maintain a backup wireless Internet connection in case the power goes out. There's a typhoon, a natural disaster causing the Internet to go out so that they can still continue to do their work even when there are problems. The government has also made significant investments into their power grid, where when I started in 2005, rolling brownouts or scheduled power outages were very common. You rarely see those today. And this leads us into reason number seven, government backing. The Philippines government is super on board with business process outsourcing and with the outsourcing industry overall. So they've made significant investments not just to infrastructure, but also to education and culture and understanding. They want you bringing your outsourcing to the Philippines and they've done a lot of things over the years to make that easier, to educate the workforce to bring in skills that are relevant to you. And they're continuing to do this today. And that is seven reasons why the Philippines is a business process outsourcing giant and the biggest business process outsourcing country in the world today. In fact, in 2010, they overtook India as the number one call center location in the world. Now this all leads me to reason number eight, the non discriminatory culture in the Philippines. The Philippines is a very open culture. They do not have a problem working for a male boss or a female boss. They're also very open with LGBTQ issues. Generally, when you hire someone, they're going to work for you really well, regardless of your situation. This makes it super easy to scale your organization, to scale your workforce in the Philippines. It's all very easy and seamless. So now that you understand why the Philippines is the world's business process outsourcing giant, let's get into what they're really good at again. The education system in the Philippines is turning out programmers, developers. They're very good at this. So why is the Philippines the world's business process outsourcing giant? Well, English, wages, education, culture, it all adds up to have a better experience in the Philippines than elsewhere in the world. If you like this video, I hope you'll subscribe. I have a whole bunch of other videos both on education about the Philippines and how you can take advantage of this in your business. Subscribe and check out onlinejobs ph.