I hate the word “benefits” when it comes to work related additions.

In the US, most “benefits” serve to tie someone down to a job they don’t like.  

“I can’t quit and start out on my own, what about benefits”?

But, from an employers perspective???

Employee benefits is one of the reasons why a lot of Filipinos prefer long-term employment. It makes them work for you and only you. It’s the icing on the cake. 

You have a monthly salary and perks?! 
Why would I want to do anything else if I had that with just one job?

What benefits can you give to your Filipino workers? 

Potential “Benefits”:

1. The benefit that most Filipinos would want (and look forward to) is the 13th month. https://blog.onlinejobs.ph/13th-month-pay-practical-advice. 

If you’re new to outsourcing and you feel like you don’t have enough to give a lot of employee perks, this is the easiest option. It’s only given out once a year and only costs an extra month’s salary.
This is the only one that you SHOULD be paying.  Plan for it. 

The rest of these are optional (I mean…everything is optional…)

2. Social Security System (SSS) – this is the Philippines version of social security. That’s where Filipinos can draw their pension once we’ve completed 10 years of payments. This is also where they can get unemployment, disability, maternity and retirement benefits. <$50/month.

3. Pag-Ibig Fund (Home Development Mutual Fund)  – It’s an investment and savings fund owned and controlled by the government to help Filipinos buy their own homes. Even if they don’t plan to buy a home, they contribute to it because it also offers a lot of loan programs and benefits. <$10/month.

4. Philhealth – it’s their form of socialized medicine. They’re all pretty much required to pay into it, one way or another. It’s not much but it does help reduce medical bills and is recognized by all Philippines hospitals. <$10/month.

5. HMO – Private health insurance – This is trickier than the others…but most of the work is done by your OFS. Unless you have an official business set up in the Philippines (almost nobody does…including us!), your OFS will need to sign up for this on their own.  You can either pre-pay them for their monthly payment or reimburse them for the monthly payment (they’ll prefer the pre-payment). Either way, you should require a receipt as proof of payment.
A decent HMO plan in the Philippines is a “Private Room” plan with top hospitals and will cost between $400-550 per member per year. <$50/month.

Here are 10 providers you can tell your OFS to look into if you want to do this:
1.  Medicard – https://www.medicardphils.com/&nbsp;
2.  Maxicare – https://www.maxicare.com.ph/
3.  Intellicare – https://www.intellicare.net.ph/
4.  ValueCare – https://www.valucarehealth.com/
5.  Pacific Cross – https://www.pacificcross.com.ph/#home
6.  EastWest health Care – http://eastwest-healthcare.com/
7.  Insular health care – https://shop.insularhealthcare.com.ph/
8.  Caritas health – https://www.caritashealthshield.com.ph/
9.  PhilCrae – https://www.philcare.com.ph/
10. Avega – https://www.avega.com.ph/

We used ValueCare.

Here’s a lot more detail:
https://blog.onlinejobs.ph/how-to-compute-for-filipino-va-benefits

Look…none of this is required.  
You SHOULD pay the 13th month.
We paid that from the beginning.

Here’s the approximate timeline for when we started paying for these:
1. 13th month – right from the start
2. SSS/PhilHealth – I started adding to their salary in the 2nd year of having OFS work for me (2006). It was just a salary increase one time. From there we never dealt with it again. 
If I had to give advice for when to pay this, pay it when your OFS is contributing more to your business than you’re paying them.
3. Pag-Ibig is so small I never worried about it, but we’ve helped people with loans quite a few times over the years.
4. HMO – We didn’t start this until about 2014. Our team was asking for it. Now we provide it to everyone who joins our team. 

If you have questions, just reply.

John

PS. Sledding with my 9yr old girl who is gutsy and giggles loudly the entire time is so fun!