Your OFS Picked Up Another Job—Now What?

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 436, ofs working multiple jobs. So this is a really big concern of mine and of ours right now as a company. We are dealing with a lot of this situation right now and we're trying to figure out how we handle it and how what the best situation. So there are two things I want to talk about today. One is hiring someone who already has another job and then how you handle when someone gets another job. So the first situation, hiring someone who already has another job. So you're recruiting someone, you go through the interview process, you're finding like you really like this person. And then you ask what other jobs do you have? And they say, oh, I have a full time job working for a company in Canada or wherever. So what do you do? So for me, this is not an ideal situation. But sometimes hiring someone who already has another job is the only, only situation you have. Especially this happens when you're hiring someone super technical and super technical and skilled people typically already have another job or you need someone part time, that part time person needs a full time job to support themselves. So the first thing in this situation to recognize is if they were honest with you, that's a really good sign. It's a good sign that they want to be honest, that they want to do good, honest work. I really like that. So they're giving you a chance to walk away. They don't want to be hired under false pretenses. You, you know, I mean, it's a good way to start a working relationship. Now, not all Filipinos are like this, many are. But you'll definitely find people that will not tell you that they have another job. So let me address that in the next section, People having, where I talk about people with multiple jobs. So if you're hiring someone who already has another job, just recognize there are a couple things that you should work through with them before you go through this. Number one, recognize that you're probably their second priority. So it's important to recognize that their full time job is needs to be their priority. That's where most of their money comes from and that's the priority. So the work that you get will hopefully be secondary and so it may not be their best. Also recognize that if you're hiring someone who has another job, you're putting pressure on that other employer because now they are, they're potentially overworked. So here are the things that you need to work out with them. One, how many hours a week should they be working for you? What are they already working for the other person and what is reasonable? I don't think it's super reasonable to work 60 hours a week, at least not ongoing. So that's something to work out and be aware. How much are they already working? How much are you expecting then? What's the expected output? What's the quantity of work? What's the quality of work? Also, what's the timeline that you would expect them to respond to you and to respond to your messages or to your feedback? And then also, you should probably work out. What's their schedule like? Like, you're expecting this many hours a week. When are they going to fit that in? Is it going to be on Saturday and Sunday? Is it going to be in the evenings or in the mornings? Is it going to be after their other job? What's their schedule going to be like? All of these things are important in having success in working with someone who has two jobs. Okay, so then, now let's talk about situation number two. So you have someone working for you and they get another job, or you hired someone and they already had another job, but they didn't tell you about it. So here's typically what happens. You hire someone, you start working together, they're great. Maybe you don't put in enough work up front to keep them busy full time. So they find, oh, I'm hired for 40 hours a week, but I'm only working 27, and so I have a bunch of extra time. Wow, I could really use that extra income. They go and find another job. What they end up finding is that other job is very demanding. And now they're working 50 hours a week and it's too much. And so work quality starts to suffer. It's a similar situation. If you hire someone who didn't tell you that they had another job, you'll find that they'll do really good work for a little bit. They find they're overwhelmed, work quality starts to suffer. This is super frustrating and it's not a super uncommon experience. In the Philippines, they're calling this hustle culture, where you get multiple jobs with multiple clients. It's something we're trying to work through as a company and trying to see if we can not end this, but produce more honesty in the situation where they're telling you they're getting another job and telling you why. So let me tell you how I've approached this. And then I got an email today. From someone that had a really good approach to this. So typically when I see work decline, I'm going to suggest to them that a, it's my fault. That's, that's the first thing. So, hey, I noticed things aren't going so well. Have I done something? What is there that's going on? You know, what are you struggling with? What are you stuck on? Do you not trust me? What's causing this decline? And maybe it's not a decline in productivity. Maybe it's not getting work done as fast. Maybe you're slipping in quality. Whatever it is, I'm going to start a conversation with them about it and I'm going to give them a chance to say, hey, I found another job. Or to say, yeah, I'm actually sick. Like I'm having eye problems or my wife is sick and so I'm having to take care of the kids more. All of these things are just, it's really, it's a really great way to approach the situation. First by giving them a chance to be honest with you. Now, as part of that conversation, I will often say, do you have another job? And they may or may not be honest. Let me tell you what happened with Luca. So Luca sends. I'm going to read Luca's email because this is really, really good. He says, she started working for our company and everything was okay right from the bat. We put her on full time salary. There was not a huge amount of work to do in the beginning. And this is what led, I think, to her looking for extra work elsewhere. But then the workload got intensive and problems began to appear. So we had a chat and I simply asked her, do you work for other companies? She said, yes, in part. I was mad. I pay her full time salary. Why is she not doing a full time job? And then I realized that it makes no sense to calculate productivity in terms of hours. Also, the truth was that for the most part I was happy with her work. It's just that occasionally it was of poor quality. So now let me address that in my experience. Yeah, I've been happy with what they're doing. Typically the quantity of it slips or attention to detail slips. Where, like, I really like the way you write, but you're missing things here. You have a link here and you publish this and the link isn't linked. It's. It's not, it's just blank letters. It's not clickable. That's dumb. Why did you miss that? Or look there. There are these three grammar errors in this thing. And I know you speak perfect English and you have Grammarly or whatever other tools, so why are you missing these things? So it's not necessarily that it's poor quality, but it can be poor quality or. Well, you were doing 18 of these per day before whatever it is, and now you're only doing six. Hey, what's going on here? And then I'm going to take the same approach as Luca, which I'm about to read, that I don't want to lose this person. I know they're good and talented and it's so much harder to lose them and to find someone new than it is to work through the situation. So here's what Luca says. I did not want to lose her, nor make her feel guilty for working hard or wanting a better life. So this is how I approached her. He says, what do you think would happen to your family if you suddenly had an accident or fell ill or wouldn't be able to work anymore? That would be bad, wouldn't it? I know that you want more in life and that's good. But if I give you a wage for 40 hours of work and then you finish in 30 hours, then you should take time off. Resting is important for your health. I need you to be healthy and strong and always super fresh for my job. So after my job, I don't want you to do another 20 to 30 hours of work because then the qual quality of your work is not good. You'll feel tired, things will be bad for everyone. Finish my work, take the time off, spend it with your family and build happy memories. I want you to have those happy memories. When you are happy and rested, your work is better. I'm paying you full time wages so that you can do that. If you do a better quality of work, the company will get bigger and you'll get a higher wage. What do you say? So some of that, some of that is maybe there's some manipulation in there, but you get the point of, hey, I hired you for a certain thing. You agreed to it. You're not, you're not holding up your end, right? In. In Luca's case, she saw the point. She quit her other job. He says her work is much better. And he told her, hey, look, occasionally when our workload is light, you can take on extra work as long as it's temporary and not a lot. Now, I know there are some people in the Philippines who will throw an absolute tantrum fit over what I'm saying right now, because it is their right to work multiple jobs. I Recently had someone, an employer come to me and saying, hey, I have someone that's working three other jobs and billing me the work time for those others. What should I do? And I was like, yeah, you should fire her. She ended up going. She. She communicates with the person she's working with and comes back to me and says, yeah, I let her go. She was pissed. She said, it's her right to do this. It's her right to work. To work three different jobs at the same time, or four different jobs at the same time. She was. She was paying $10 an hour. She said the other jobs were paying her $5 an hour. And so she was billing at like $25 an hour, maybe $20 an hour. She was billing at $20 an hour because she was billing all four jobs for the same hour. And this person in the Philippines thought, that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with this. I'm entitled to do this now. That's a problem. And I told the employer, that's a problem. And she let her go. And she was pretty disappointed. Like, she said, you know, I'm her highest paying job. She just didn't seem to care that what she was doing was super dishonest. And I agree that that's really messed up. Most Filipinos don't want to do that. There are some, though, that are finding these online, online courses that are telling them, oh, this is okay. It's okay to be dishonest. Most are very honest, and they want to be honest with you. They don't want to cheat you. So as. As you see in Luca's situation that she got another job because she had time. When Lucas talked to her about it, she was honest and she wanted to be honest with him. As an employer, you also need to recognize that they might need to make more money than you're paying them, or they might just want to make more money and they want to work really hard. And maybe he's right in that you don't need to be judging productivity based on hours worked. Especially if they can do a really great job and you're happy with their work, then, you know, maybe the 27 hours is acceptable rather than 40. So at online jobs, we're doing a few things to address this situation. Number one, we're creating education. So we are creating education that talks through this situation with people when they first sign up at online jobs. Should you work for multiple employers? Well, we're not going to tell you no, you can't. But here's the situation that you'll find when you do this. And this is. This comes from my team, what they've said about this. And because a bunch of them have tried this, oh, they got a job. They weren't working 40 hours. They were working 32 hours. So they went and got another job. And what they found is they knew their productivity suffered for both employers. They knew they were taking a risk of losing both jobs, and then they're out of a job for both of them. And so what we're creating is to look at the whole situation, which is similar to what Luca said. You're going to work yourself to death. You're going to get sick, your health is not good, you're going to make all this money, but you can't enjoy the money because you're working too much. You're not taking care of your. Your children or your spouse. Or maybe you're single and you have friends and you're losing out. You're losing out on those friends because you're working so much. Is it really worth it to work a bunch of jobs? And then do you feel good knowing you're cheating people in the end? Because like I said, most people want to be honest. They don't feel good cheating other people. And that's a real situation. And so they may have been taught that it's acceptable to go and get multiple jobs, but in the end, they have a gut feeling that they're cheating someone here, and that's not right. So what should you do to handle this situation? So if you're hiring someone that already has another job, go into it with your eyes wide open. Recognize work quality is likely to suffer. If you already have someone and you find their work quality suffers. Recognize maybe they need to make more money. Recognize maybe they have another job and they are cheating you. Recognize maybe they're just trying to make ends meet. The first thing to do is to talk to them. Approach them with an open, honest conversation. Tell them you've noticed work work is declining. Have you done something wrong? Assume it's your fault, and then approach and say, do you have other work? Are you working for someone else? Have you taken on another job? I've done this with varying degrees of success. Usually it's pretty successful for you. Obviously, it's going to be a different story. So if you find this situation, I'm interested in hearing what you find, how you solve it, how you go about it. I want to know because we want to be helpful.