Want to draw top talent from the Philippines? With a large workforce known for its strong English proficiency, the country is a natural choice whether you’re targeting English-speaking professionals or recruiting talent globally.
If you’re hiring from the Philippines for the first time, it’s worth taking a little time to learn about Filipino work culture. It’s not a requirement, but it shows respect and helps your new hires feel valued and set up for success.
Key takeaways:
- Building genuine personal relationships with your Filipino team members creates a foundation for professional trust, loyalty, and success.
- Effective communication with your Filipino employees requires intentionally creating safe and supportive channels for honest feedback.
- Striking a balance between respecting hierarchy and keeping an open, encouraging management style can lead to better results and help create a high-performing, thoughtful workplace.
The Importance of Relationships and Community
Loneliness and isolation are two common, yet avoidable, risks of remote work. That’s why it’s so important to be intentional about helping your employees build meaningful human connections with one another.
Filipino employees in particular tend to value collaboration, harmony, and collective success. Aligning with these priorities will help make your Filipino staff more comfortable and also help you build trust and strengthen teamwork across your company.
Set the tone by starting meetings with a few minutes of friendly conversation. You can also create informal touchpoints — such as virtual coffee chats or casual one-on-ones — that provide opportunities for team-building activities on a more personal level. These small efforts help build a sense of belonging and camaraderie, which in turn encourages greater collaboration.
Small gestures of appreciation, such as shout-outs and acknowledging personal milestones, can also help build loyalty and create a more connected, engaged team.
Core Filipino Values That Shape the Workplace
When onboarding a Filipino worker, it can be helpful to keep some of the cultural norms commonly found in a Filipino workplace in mind. Here’s an overview of a few of the most important ones:
- Kapwa: This is arguably the most foundational value. Translating to a sense of “shared self” or togetherness, it helps set the foundation for an interconnected community that prioritizes the group’s well-being and success.
- Pakikisama: Derived from “kapwa,” this value emphasizes the importance of getting along with others. Employees who prioritize it may go to great lengths to ensure positive working relationships, avoid confrontation, and ensure colleagues feel respected.
- Utang na Loob: The phrase roughly translates to a “debt of gratitude,” but in the workplace, it’s better understood as a sense of mutual respect and reciprocal loyalty.
- Hiya: This is a complex value that can be thought of as “shame” or “modesty.” In a professional context, it relates to the desire to avoid embarrassing oneself or others. The result is that people often take a more conflict-averse approach to interpersonal communications.
- Bahala Na: While sometimes misinterpreted as fatalism, Bahala Na can be viewed as an expression of resilience and adaptability. It reflects the belief that an employee can face challenges with courage and trust that things will work out, encouraging a proactive and resourceful approach to problem-solving.
Communication Style in the Philippines
Considering the importance placed on pakikisama and hiya, business communications in the Philippines tend to be indirect, polite, and diplomatic. Confrontation is, in large part, actively avoided.
As a result, staff may hesitate to openly disagree with a manager or deliver negative feedback, fearing they may cause offense or disrupt group harmony.
It’s essential to be honest with employees in the Philippines, even when the message isn’t entirely positive, and to create a psychologically safe environment where they feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback.
You can help build that sense of safety by using one-on-one meetings, written feedback forms, or anonymous surveys instead of asking for input in large group settings.
When delivering constructive criticism is necessary, take an even and encouraging tone. This will help ensure that the focus is more on how to improve the work rather than criticizing the worker.
Respect for Hierarchy and Authority
Filipino culture places a strong emphasis on respecting company leaders and senior team members. Ultimately, this means promoting respect in the workplace by acknowledging people’s accomplishments and, at times, deferring to the wisdom of experience.
As a result, recognizing titles and positions can be important. It’s common for Filipinos to use respectful terms like “Po” (an honorific meant to make sentences more polite) and “Opo” (a more formal “yes”) when speaking to someone senior in age or rank, even in a remote setting.
Respecting this workplace norm for Filipino colleagues and employees doesn’t have to be a heavy lift for managers. Acknowledge your role in the company hierarchy, but offer an open-door policy to help your reports and others feel comfortable approaching you.
Work Ethic and Adaptability
Filipino professionals are known for their strong work ethic, resilience, and positive attitude. With nearly half of the population fluent in English, they can easily adapt to Western business practices and integrate seamlessly into a global workforce. The adaptability and resourcefulness of Filipino workers often lead to creative, practical problem-solving.
You may have heard of so-called “Filipino time” — an informal cultural expression referring to the country’s residents’ relaxed attitude toward punctuality. It’s important to know that their more casual approach to time isn’t a sign of disrespect. Instead, it’s a norm that allows for a more flexible approach throughout day-to-day life.
However, the good news is that it’s not all that common in the workplace. If tardiness ever becomes an issue, take a constructive approach to discussing it and set clear expectations regarding schedules and deadlines to avoid any misunderstandings.
Work-Life Balance and Cultural Traditions
Filipino culture is highly family-oriented, and family often plays a key role in driving an employee’s career goals and motivation. Understanding this can help employers create a more supportive and engaging work environment.
Respecting national holidays, religious festivals, local celebrations, and special occasions — and accommodating family commitments — goes a long way toward earning employees’ trust and loyalty.
This doesn’t mean sacrificing productivity. Instead, consider offering flexible options — such as floating holidays or personal days — that employees can use for cultural or religious observances.
When your Filipino talent feels their workplace respects their lives beyond the office, they’re often more motivated, loyal, and committed to the company’s success.
Tips for Creating a Supportive Remote Work Environment
Some ways to successfully manage your remote global talent include:
- Celebrate your employees’ cultural differences as a cornerstone of your workplace culture.
- Provide clear expectations to ensure a friendly and professional atmosphere as well as to ensure that roles, responsibilities, and performance metrics are clearly defined and understood.
- Schedule regular check-ins that cover both work progress and personal well-being to reinforce the relational aspect of the culture.
- Invest in technology and tools that people need to succeed.
- Offer clear opportunities for career development, training, and advancement, which can help strengthen employee engagement and long-term retention.
Ultimately, building a successful team that includes talent from the Philippines hinges on nurturing respect, support, and inclusion.
Hire and Manage Your Filipino Team With RemoFirst
RemoFirst helps companies employ workers in over 185 countries, including the Philippines, and manage and pay contractors in 150+ countries.
Our Employer of Record (EOR) service ensures your company is in full compliance with all local employment laws, so you can hire global employees without establishing a legal entity in each country where you employ talent.
But our support doesn’t stop at compliance. We provide a complete, end-to-end solution to simplify global employment. RemoFirst handles the entire employment lifecycle, including:
- Onboarding: We generate and manage locally compliant employment contracts and handle all required new-hire paperwork. We can also ship equipment to your new workers.
- Administering payroll: We process salaries accurately and on time in the local currency. Our team manages all mandatory tax withholdings and government contributions, including SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG fund payments, for talent located in the Philippines.
- Benefits administration: We manage competitive, local benefits packages that support a range of benefits, including health insurance, retirement plans, and statutory leave requirements.
Ready to learn more? Schedule a demo today.
