Courtesy of Spin Sugar
It has been popular in Philippines to accept home online jobs like data entry, customer support or technical support, but few of the companies who hires remote Filipino workers do not understand how it works and how it would be when hiring and inspiring Filipinos working from home. Thus they end up frustrated with hiring Filipino home based workers. Here are the things to consider before hiring remote Filipino staffs or building dispersed Filipino team:
Independency on work
Looking at Philippine culture, Filipinos grew up with their parents till they get married even some do not get out of their parent’s house to live by their own but stays with their parents though they got families of their own. The dependency rate to parents is high thus affecting Filipino individuals to becoming dependent person able not to do work by themselves but needs a supervision. So before hiring a Filipino to work home based, ask questions about working independently. Whether an employee works at home or in an office with peers, you have to trust that they can get work done without your oversight. Here are some questions that will help you identify Filipino independent workers such as:
- Can you describe a problem you solved on your own or an important decision you had to make alone?
- What was a time when you completed a project start to finish without supervision or support?
- Do you prefer a boss who provides lots of direction or gives you more leeway to do things your own way?
Identify prospects who are self-driven and can thrive on working independently. There are popular personality assessment tool that gives insight into how a person really behaves versus how a person may adapt their behaviors in order to get a job.
The Tropic Climate
Philippines in geographical view is a tropical country. It’s temperature affects people’s way of how much they can work. When the weather is good, Filipinos tend to choose to sleep more or get holidays. Filipinos like siesta too. They become lazy with the weather. When its rainy they prefer to stay in bed and enjoy the cool temperature. When they cannot go to work because they got lazy then comes invented reasons that will come out. Filipinos may reason out they got problems with family or illness like their child is sick or they are having headaches. With this, a company should have a thorough check of references before hiring a Filipino remote worker. Meet them in person. An eye to eye contact, gestures, and small talk will give a more complete picture of the candidate. Your gut feeling about whether this person is right for the job is stronger face to face, and you’ll establish a relationship more quickly than you would over the phone. If you can’t meet in person, arrange a teleconference and be diligent and comprehensive with his references.
Work situation in Philippines
Most Filipinos are not used to work alone. They work better when they are in a group. Ask questions about the virtual arrangement. It’s easy to assume that everyone would rather have a boss who is out of sight and earshot. But not so for the person who needs daily guidance or has trouble making decisions. Isolation is the hardest problem. Introverts do well, as they like being alone and working things out independently. The following questions will get at personality and work habits:
- Describe your working relationships. Would you say you’re more energized by collaborating or by working alone?
- What is most satisfying to you about work?
- Can you tell me about a time when you reached out to team members or managers to offer or ask for help?
Technology wise
Internet at home is not common for every Filipino household. So mostly Filipinos work in offices. With this, they are used to having someone who supervises them checking time to time if they are working or not. When hiring remote Filipino workers, a need for using tools or workplace technologies should be used. Check first the technology situation of a candidate before hiring them.
- Does he have a quiet room to work? Filipino neighborhood are close enough to each other. Some neighbors has chicken farm. Some may have cats fighting or maybe even babies crying or TV or children or worst are gang riots. This may give a background sound for customer call support remote job.
- Does he have a computer with enough memory?
- Does he have a fast internet speed?This may not be good with calls if internet speed is too slow. Customer might not hear or both sides cannot hear.
- Does he have headset and microphone to use for calls?
- Does his town experience frequent black outs?
If in the first place, a candidate does not have a stable technology requirements this may lead to frequent absences and the reason will be no internet access or maybe computers got blue screen or viruses attacks or no electricity power.
Frequent Absences
Filipinos are good in creating reasons for their absences so they get excuses. Some of them they won’t even inform they will be gone for sometime and you would end up getting crazy catching up with the tasks left undone. From the very first thing when hiring a remote Filipino, make sure to ask for phone numbers of the people closest to like the parents. Most Filipinos disappear without saying goodbye and without stating reasons or warnings. This is not because they do not pay respect but because there is a feeling of fear to disclose something that they thought is unreasonable like getting absent without valid reasons just because they feel lazy that time. Then they won’t appear at all and won’t say any warnings. When they feel guilt they disappear and just escape the situation. To avoid this, there is a need to establish communication tools like Instant Messaging, PDA’s or unified communications. Calling the parents or family close is the best way if none of the communication tools work.
It is not easy to hire remote Filipino workers. Managing them even is the most challenging. Hiring remote Filipino workers means a lot of work. Lucky enough if you can find one or two out of the 20 candidates you hire who can work independently, reliable and passionate with the job. So better be careful first on choosing a Filipino candidate before hiring them.
October 8th, 2011 
Finally I got my little Carlos peacefully sleeping. Now, I got the whole house alone and quiet, happy I can write on with my blog. Looking back at the past months, I used to spend my weekend either in a beach or going to lake park with a couple of friends or movie marathon sitting at the couch. What’s the best part was going out to the beach. I remember how I spent my summer last year in The Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, Philippines. We stayed in an island with nothing– no electricity–no water. All we had was a reserved container of water good for a week and canned goods. It was a very nice adventure that makes me long to have it again. We put up a tent in the beach side. In the night time, we had bonfire and cook our dinner. Then you wake up with the sound of the waves. That was the most amazing island adventure I had. Read more…