John Jonas says high turnover among Filipino VAs usually isn't cultural. Five real causes: boredom, feeling unheard, fear of punishment, ideas rejected, or hiring freelancers instead of full-time staff. He's kept 38 of 50 hires since 2005 by soliciting honest feedback and improving recruiting.
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Do you experience high turnover among your ofs? I got an email, someone posted this on Facebook, this question for me and one of my ofs screenshotted it and sent it to me. So he says, do you experience high turnover among Filipino remote workers? We've gone through at least 30 of them in the last three years despite providing 13 month bonus, health insurance and higher wage than if they were to work through a staff agency company. We also do daily huddles, so communication shouldn't be a problem. It seems like they always have personal issues and it's really giving us an operational headache. And I'm starting to think it's not working out. Outsourcing in the Philippines, it's kind of sad because they're usually smart but also often have two full time jobs. So to me, and I could be wrong here, but this sounds more like a management issue than a salary issue. So we almost never have someone leave. I would say I've probably had 12 to 15 people leave total since 2005. I started hiring in 2005, probably hired 50 to 55 people and I have 38 people working for me right now. No, I don't think there's a cultural thing here of them. Turning over 30 people in the last two years is quite a bit. Filipinos culturally are pretty dang loyal. They don't like to switch jobs if they have a job. They want to stick with you. But maybe you should ask your current team why they think people are leaving. You might get some really interesting answers. You'll need to tell them that they can be honest with you and that you're prepared for some really harsh feedback from them. And whatever feedback they give you is not going to affect their jobs because they'll be really hesitant if they think it might affect their job. But if you're upfront and say like, hey, I'm expecting you to tell me something really terrible about myself and about our process and our company. Why do you think people are leaving? You might get some really good feedback. So let me give you a couple things that I think might be going on. So here are some examples. Number one, they're bored. The work isn't challenging enough. Like you're just giving. Having them do mindless work. There's no need for them to focus or to be better. There's no professional fulfillment and so they're looking for it elsewhere. Number two, maybe they don't feel heard. Yes, you're doing daily huddles, but maybe they don't feel comfortable talking to you or telling you problems because of the way you're handling those huddles or because of the way you manage the communication with them. Maybe they don't feel comfortable enough to tell you what they really think. And so it's easier for them to just leave. Number three, maybe they're worried that they might lose their job if they contradict you or make a mistake. Maybe you've yelled at them or done something to have them have some fear. And if that's consistently happening where people are fearing losing their jobs, well, in the Philippines, they're, they're going to just leave because the fear just doesn't work for them. Number four, are you consistently shooting down their ideas and suggestions? I did this for a long time where I would just say no to people because it was things they were suggesting, things that I didn't understand or things that I didn't feel like would be helpful. And I just finally realized, like, I got to stop saying no to everything. So there are some things where I'm like, yeah, I don't think that's going to work super well, but I'm going to let you try it. And that, that alone just changed their behavior towards me where they became way more willing to try things and to say like, hey, we have a problem here. Hey, we can we, we should do this. And I still say no, but I say yes a lot more often. Sometimes it takes a lot to get them comfortable in speaking to you. And some of my team still aren't comfortable talking to me. And they'll go through a teammate or through a manager rather than coming directly to me, which, you know, like, it's. Sometimes this is a process. Recently I let them send me anonymous comments. Like I made a, I made a post and said, hey, what? In our base in our project management system and said, what's causing this problem? And feel free to send me an anonymous email. And I gave them. I searched online and found email anonymizers that you can send an email to someone anonymously so that they didn't have to put their name on it. All of them who sent me stuff did put their names on it, but I gave them that option so they could send it anonymous. So number five, potentially the people that you're recruiting see themselves as freelancers. There is this culture in the Philippines of freelancing. It's not the dominant culture there, but it does exist. And maybe you're attracting people that see themselves as freelancers. This is one of the things that I Talk through at 1vaoa.com where I'll give you questions that will help you kind of weed this out so that you can hire people that are more focused on full time work. So yeah, this culture of freelancing does exist in the Philippines. It's not super common but like among your friends, if you have a long list of clients, you're a rock star. When that client, when those clients dry up, you don't want to tell anybody but there's still this thing and upwork and fiverr. Promote this, this like get a bunch of clients and you become a rock star so that you can raise your wage and you can get reviews. And it's really, it's really a bad situation. But and this is one of the reasons why I don't promote reviews at onlinejobs ph where you can leave a review on any profile. Any employer can leave a review and I, I just simply will not promote this as like a main focus of our business. Like leave a review on this person you hired. Where I want people to hire a long term follower, full time person because that's really where business gets business changes rather than in a project or a freelancer that just keeps things moving forward. It doesn't, it doesn't change your business. So yeah, I feel for you for having all this turnover. I kind of doubt that it's just you're attracting freelancers. Although some of that may be. But more realistically, my guess is that in your recruiting process there's something that could be better. And that's one of the reasons I created 1vaoa.com so that I can walk you through my recruiting process. Like I said, my success rate has been pretty high. I don't know if, I mean certainly my way isn't the only way to do this, but it, it works and it works, it works really well.
