Is an Outsourced Worker a Member of Staff?

Before I start this video, I'm going to have to say that this is not tax or legal advice. You should speak to a lawyer or an accountant in your country to find out what the position is in your country. Now, with that said, I'm going to tell you my understanding of it is and how I've been doing things.

Okay? So as a outsource worker, a member of staff. Well, yes, no, yes. Basically treat them like a member of staff. You pay them, you work with them, you get jobs done, etc. But no, they are not strictly an employee, per se and the country that you're in because they are in a different country. Well, unless you're in the Philippines, in which case they are a member of staff.

But if you're outside the Philippines and you're hiring someone from the Philippines, then no they are not strictly a member of staff. So you do not pay national insurance for them. You do not pay social security or tax or anything like that for that member of staff that makes the staff member a lot, lot cheaper. Added with that the price of paying for people in the Philippines as lot less than in most Western countries.

You can save crazy amounts of money for the same kind of work from someone who's skilled to do the job, but from the Philippines, now. One of the things is that while they're not a member of staff, I treat all the people who work with me who are outsourced workers. Like they are a member of staff. So for example, any of the rules or any of the things that you would get as an employee or a staff member for a Filipino company, I will give them that in the company that work with me.

What I basically boils down to as that is quite like the American system and a lot of ways there's added benefits that you get in the UK system that you wouldn't get in the Philippines. And some of them, they are given to the Filipino staff as well because I want them to feel. That they are part of the team, that they are important, that they are worthwhile employees and want them to enjoy their job and the one to feel that they've got added perks and stuff that they wouldn't normally get from outsource jobs or even in their own country, they wouldn't get, you know, those perks or working for someone, you know, some things are.

Unbelievably simple. Like for example, a five day work week, believe it or not, in the Philippines is very common for jobs to be a six-day work week. So five day work week is what we have in the UK and in Spain, and that's what we give to the Filipinos as well. For most of the jobs tend to have people work Monday to Friday.

We also allow them to work their own times as opposed to setting times. Now. In for, example, the UK, if you had someone working for you, say as a freelancer or so on, and they work self-employed for themselves, then you cannot dictate to them when they work. You can tell them what work you want done. You can tell them the quality standard you want it at.

But you cannot say to them, Oh, you have to work between such and such a time because effectively makes them a member of staff. So one of the things we give to Filipino workers, is we will say, for example, or we need you to be available roundabout morning time UK and Spain time so we can speak to you.

Because the time difference just now is six hours for Spain, seven hours for the UK. Now when it goes into wintertime. That changes minus one hour again. So they become seven hours in the future for Spain or eight hours for the UK. But technically speaking, it generally means that when you are talking to them. In the morning and the UK and Spain, you're speaking to them early evening, roundabout, about five, six o'clock in the evening.

So it's not such a big problem, and that generally works really well. Now if you're in America, you'll find the timezone to be a little bit more tricky. So you'll be more than likely be telling people to do jobs. Maybe later on in your evening, they're getting up. First thing in the morning or just setting the work to do over overnight and then you're seeing what they've done, getting the report and so on.

But when it comes to them being a member of staff, no they're not, but you want to treat them like they are. You want to treat them as part of the team. You want to basically make them feel that they are not just a freelancer that they are. A member of staff for all intents and purposes. However, one of the things that's different from members of staff to freelancers, is that freelancers have to invoice you for your work.

So, people who work for you from the Philippines, they will send you an invoice. Whether that's every two weeks or every month, depending how you do the pay. Now I do it every two weeks for a Filipino staff because that's a system that they like better. It's just something that works for them in the UK and Spain.

We pay our staff on a monthly basis. And once you've started to work with someone for a while as possible to say to them, hey, do you want to, you know, change over to a monthly payment platform instead of getting paid every two weeks. Now I asked all the staff the question. And two of them said it wouldn't be an issue.

Four of them basically told me why it would be an issue for them and we decided to just stick to the way it is currently because at the end of the day, yes, I'm having to do payments 24 times a year instead of 12 times a year, but it's not a hardship. It's not very hard at all we've got systems set up, so I just press a button.

And outcomes, a CSV file of all the payments. I upload that to TransferWise, which I've talked about in another video. I'll probably add a card up there so you can click on and see about that. And the money just sent off to them within an hour, usually turns out within 30 minutes for them. So it's not hard.

It doesn't take up much of my time to do at all. So I don't mind doing it. Yes, it's a few more invoices. Well, you know, there's ten members of staff, so that's 20 invoices a month times 12 but you know, again, not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially with the amount of things that get done from them.

Now you do want to double-check what your situation is. So, for example. We have to show that the payment has left the UK and went to the Philippine bank of the member of staff. Because at the end of the day, the taxman sees all this money going out and he wants to have invoices and they want to have proof that this money is actually been sent away abroad.

To a real person. It's not that hard to do. You can ask them for copies of their ID and so on if you need to present that kind of thing. But generally speaking, an invoice is more than fine for covering what you actually have to do tax-wise. Now for a new start, Filipinos or people who haven't worked online before.

The concept of an invoice is actually quite strange to them. So you will have to explain how you actually do the invoices. No, one of my members of staff is also going to be making a YouTube channel at the same time to explain how it works from the worker's point of view. I'm talking about it from the boss's point of view, so he'll be explaining one of the short videos, How, to make an invoice isn't up yet, but I'll add a card.

Once he's done it, so you can click on that and actually see that video. So when you get members of staff who are Filipinos, you can just send them to the video. He will be speaking to them in Tagalog, am Tagawhat? Said it wrong, emm he will be speaking to them in their language as well as English.

Its quite a mix actually of when they are talking. It's quite good. Actually. I was watching one of his videos he had done and I was really, really impressed by it. He's not one of the shy Filipinos, that's for sure. But yeah, getting the invoice correct. For most business people and you know, Western countries doing an invoice is second nature.

You don't even think about it. It's fairly straight forward. But if someone has never done an invoice before, they have to know the basics, you know, they have to tell you. The name, who the supplier is emm what the job was done, the amount to be charged, the bank to pay it to, etc, etc. But again, there'll be a link for that video.

You know, I'll will update it at some point later on. This video will go out first probably, and then later on I will update it so you can actually send people to it. It will probably be a link in the description actually. So that's one of the other fundamental differences. Now, what I would say is that, it is important to I mean treating them, like a member of staff is to give them stuff like, you know, bank holidays and holiday pay, sick pay, you know, different kinds of things like that.

Now one of the things that is different from employing someone in a job is that you'd have to give them maternity pay in the UK and Spain. Now, strictly speaking, you don't have to do that for them. But what I've decided to do from a Filipino staff is to treat them just exactly the same way as they'd be treated in the Philippines if they got pregnant.

So everybody gets paid, when and if that happens. That's fine, things in place for the company for that. And the good thing about that is that especially if they're a mother of the want to have work, once the baby's getting to the point where that they can return to work. You know, I've got one of my members of staff has a young baby, I believe he's maybe about nine months or something like that just now, when this video went up, but she works from home because she's on flexible time.

She's able to work between. Well, the child and the child's needs, obviously it's a young baby, so it goes down to sleep and stuff like that at different points in the day. And she's able to do a job and she really, really likes the job for that basis of being really flexible. She doesn't ask to speak to anyone, so it's all online, virtual assistant stuff, so it's all.

Typing things, researching, looking up things, and you know, dealing with different tasks and so on. And they all can get done at different points during the day. So it doesn't bother me, in the slightest, that, you know she'll start her day early on in the day and finish it quite late at night but it allows her to have the flexible time of, she can do it dedicated hour of work here, dedicated two hours there.

A dedicated hour there. And fit the children around about it. So you'll find that kind of employee is really grateful for the job, especially if you're clever enough to be a boss that can actually realize how beneficial that will be, because you get a huge loyalty from that kind of worker because at the end of the day it is hard to find a job when you've got a young child and you have to stay at home with them.

And only working is absolutely perfect for that kind of thing. So yeah. So that's just some of the. Things about the difference between outsourced workers and staff, but I implore you to treat them as if they're a member of staff, but you've got all the advantages as well, where you're not paying them national insurance, you're not paying social security and so on.

So there is huge benefits to your company, you will find, that you know, with the lower wage as well. It really is great. One of the things that I've done is get assistance for my account managers and one of my companies. And that really has helped them out because they've been able to work on jobs and say, well, okay, this is quite repetitive, and this is something that I can train someone up, how to do.

So I get them to train them up on different jobs that they need done, and they can then get them to do the repetitive work so they can do more work. That's geared towards bringing in clients or looking after higher-paying clients and so on. That has been really, really good. So yeah, think about that.

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