“My Filipino worker just disappeared!”
I’ve heard this quite a few times from other business owners, especially those just starting out. This usually happens in these 3 situations:
1. You just hired a new person, gave them their first task, and then they tell you they have to resign.
2. You’ve had someone working for you for a bit; they’ve done great work, then suddenly you don’t hear from them for a week.
3. You’ve had someone working for you for years, and they stop responding to your emails and don’t email you for a month.
In over 90% of the cases I’ve seen, the cause is that the person is embarrassed that they don’t know how to do whatever you’ve asked them to do.
They either don’t know how to solve something, don’t understand something, or can’t figure something out.
The natural Filipino reaction is to shy away from it because they don’t want to disappoint you.
Unless you want to lose an employee (or lose months of productivity like what happened to me a couple of times), you need to do a few things.
- You need to provide training. On-the-job training is ingrained in Filipino work culture. You can create the training or use the ones we have at VAsMadeEasy.com.
- Email them and tell them you know they have a problem.
- Tell them that you’d like to know what the problem is so you can help them solve it.
The first step will literally save you thousands of dollars and countless headaches. Numbers 2 and 3 will help you gain their trust.
When they’re confident about their skills and know they can trust you, they’ll run out of reasons to disappear.
Usually this is when someone starts to go above and beyond what you’ve asked them to do.
John
PS. Meet Milo:
He’s 19 and running a web design agency. He just got back to the US after living in American Samoa for 8 months because he saw a business growth opportunity. It worked.
On his way home, he flew through Salt Lake City, so we met up for a hike.
The kid is a rock star.