How to Deal with Holidays and Sick Pay with your Filipino Workers

So, this is how I deal with holidays and sick days around my Filipino workers. Now in this video, I'm going to be looking off to the left because I've written up bullet points to deal with some of the terminologies from the dates and stuff like that because I'm not going to remember them all. And I don't want to have jump cuts.

All over this video. Cause it takes absolutely ages for me to record videos when I do that. So, you're going to have to put up with that, anyway. So, let's get into saw what happens is. That all Filipinos are given what's called Regular Holidays or the Regular Holidays in the Philippines is approximately 12 of them.

They include things like New Year's Day, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Labor Day, Independence Day, National Heroes' Day, Bonifacio Day, Christmas Day, Rizal Day, and also two holidays around Eid. Now, the Eid ones, you don't actually get to find out what day they're on until close to the time. I think it's roughly about a month before given them the official dates.

Now, while the majority of people in the Philippines are Christian and as a Christian nation, then in the Southern islands, there's more Muslims down there as well, but it's a national holiday that everybody gets. So, something to keep in mind. 12 of them, so everybody gets them who works for me. Gets these as regular holidays.

They are paid days off. They do not have to work those days. In fact, they can't work on Christmas Day and they can't, work on New Years Day because there's no one available at all. And we tell everybody just don't bother. But what we do, do is we allow them to, what we call bank these days so they can bank the days and keep them for a day that would suit them better.

So, for example, some may want to use them around family celebration or so on. So, they will just not bother taking the day off and use the day further along. Now what I do, do is I give every member of staff an additional 10 days and top of that. So that's 22 days holiday they get, well, actually it's 23 because I give them their birthday as a holiday as well.

So even if their birthday lands on a Saturday or Sunday, they still get that as a day off so they can choose to take her off the falling Monday or the Friday before or even later on. It doesn't really matter. So, 23 days paid holiday a year, which roughly works out at, because no one works, everyone works five days a week.

Right. So that basically gives you a full month off paid, when you're working with me on that in the setup I have done, now I will put in the description below all the holidays for 2020 when they fall this year, they are roughly the same. I think there's a couple of exceptions where. Yeah, National Heroes' Day is as the last Monday of August, so that can change.

So, this year it's the 31st since 2020, but it does differ depending on what year it is. So, it's good for keeping planning on what you're doing, now depending on what country you're from. I'm from spin, but I'm from the UK originally and I know that Spain and the UK have quite similar holidays to the Filipinos as well.

Obviously, Christmas Day, everybody has that. Who's in one of the Western countries? New Year's Day. Again, everyone does that except for as the Chinese, they have Chinese New Year. But yeah, so basically, you'll find that quite a lot. The days off actually coincide with your days off where they don't, it's not the deal you know, if you really need them working on specific days when they've got a holiday.

Then you can definitely say that when you're putting the job offer out there and let them know in advance, or you can just say to them, Hey, this is a very important date in our business calendar, and we need these available. Again, that's not usually a problem. The only issue can be if it's around religious celebrations.

But since no one generally apart from Ebenezer Scrooge makes people work Christmas day, then it's usually not a problem. So, another bunch of holidays that the Filipinos would get, in the Philippines if they worked for Philippian company, is called, special, non-working holidays. Now, I can't remember the exact number of them, but basically, if any of our Filipino staff want to take any of these special non-working holidays.

So Chinese New Year, as an example of one of them, if they worked for a Filipino company, they would have that day off. Whereas if they're working for a boss overseas, generally speaking, we don't have that day off. But if they wanted to take it, they would just use one of the holidays. And that would become a paid day off for them.

Now, we do have a special contingency that if someone wants to take an on working special day off, they can, but then don't get paid for it unless they use a holiday. So, you know, it's a bit of give and take there. Most of the staff don't mind to those particular days cause they're generally not massive celebrations, that they are into.

The other things to keep in mind. Sick days. Okay. So, what we do with the sick days is that you can use one of the holidays or a vacation if you're American instead of taking a day off sick right, now, obviously if it was some extreme circumstance or some extreme situation. We still pay our Filipino staff. There was an example a year and a half ago where one of our staff unfortunately developed intestine cancer and had to take days off for treatments, stuff like that.

Well, and that specific case, because it was a very special circumstance, we just continued to pay the member of staff as if they worked those days because quite frankly, I'm not taking money off someone who is in a medical condition such as cancer. Unfortunately, that member of staff passed away later on.

But anyway, we'll maybe talk about that in another video. With regards to sick days, one of the good things if you are offering your Filipinos flexible working time is that if they've got a doctor appointment or a dentist appointment during the day. They can go off and do it. Come back and work the other hours so, what I generally do is have everybody work eight hours a day, five days a week and if they do have an important things such as going to the bank, cause, led to believe going to the bank is.

A several hour experience depending on which bank you go to, especially if you're applying for a new account or have to, you know, queue up someplace to get official ID for something. These kind of tasks can take several hours to complete, just due to the popularity and the amount of people standing in line to get them done.

So, what most of the staff who have to take those kind of. Time off to go and do that and do as the either just start working later on that day or the work part of the day in the morning, during the afternoon, we'll go in and do that and then what the rest of the hours and their evening time, so.

Definitely offering flexibility and start and stop times and stuff like that really helps your staff out there when it comes to these kinds of things and minimize the amount of days that they actually take off, which is obviously is a good thing from a boss. You know, you want to know. When your staff are going to be available, you don't want them just disappearing on you.

One thing I would see is that when it comes to holidays, try and get everybody to book them in as far in advance or just turn around and say to them, hey. If there's something, you're thinking about going to or something you're thinking about doing with your family or whatever, if you could let me know, just know.

Give me an idea, you can change your main closer to the time, that's fine. But if you give me a rough idea of who's going to be available and who's not going to be available in specific days, then that really does help things. Now, if you get to a situation where I've got where you've got several people who are doing a similar job, it becomes less of a hassle.

If you know, in advance because their friends or your coworkers can take over that task, in they obviously expect, the same in return when they go away. So yeah. So what I would say is be upfront with everybody? Just tell them, these are the days you're going to get paid off. These are the additional holidays that you're given.

Now, one of the things that does happen a lot with online workers is that some people are treating online workers as if they are staff that they can just call up, get to do stuff. You know, giving them no rights, give them, no benefits, etc, which I think is just an appalling way to actually run any kind of business.

So, when you actually have staff, especially if you're hiring full-time. Staff are part-time staff from the Philippines who are going to be working in your company. It should extend some of the rights and what your staff would get in say they in the West and the UK in the USA etc. And obviously vary from country to country, but I tend to try and follow along the lines of the can of rights and kind of stuff that Filipino staff get in the Philippines, you know, cause you want.

The online job to be not only attractive for pay and for convenience, but also you wanted to be similar in the type of jobs that they have or could get in the Philippines. So yeah. So that's kind of things to keep in mind holidays and sick days communicate it all upfront. You're not going to have people disappearing away.

For family events or holidays and not telling you because they didn't know how to tell you. You know, like even if there's something like in a bereavement in the family and so on, that's something, if it's a very close member of family, they're going to go to and not always as it local. Sometimes actually have to travel away for it.

So be flexible and let your staff know that you are listening, that you are. Someone who actually has a bit of compassion about you and you know, you'll find you'll have a better worker who will want to stay with you longer, cause they don't want to lose the opportunity of working with someone who actually gives a crap about them.

You know, they're not just some person generate money for you. They are more than that. Well, actually the way I look at it anyway, so yeah. So just to recap. Pay them for the regular holidays in the Philippines, give them holidays of their own free choice and stuff like that. The birthday holiday, I give that.

It's just something I do. I believe passionately that if it's your birthday, you shouldn't have to work on that day. Some do, and I'll use it for another day, or maybe they've got a family celebration planned for the weekend, and that's when they're gonna use it, but on Friday or whatever. Great. You know, it's their choice anyway.

If you liked this video, please leave me a like. Subscribe to the channel, send that signal to YouTube that these are the type of videos that you want to find out and want to see more of, and yeah share it with your friends. So, I'll see you in the next video. Bye.