Speaker 1: Okay, so our first step that we're going to cover on managing remote teams fundamental shift with going from having just a local team to having some international team members, and that's probably the shift you'll start with, you'll probably start with going hybrid, and it's unlikely you'll jump into going completely remote, although some of you guys, if you're a bit radical, you might the fundamental shift that I think is the most important is to treat your team as if they were a local team, I have access to observing many different business owners, who will say, Hey, I've got my Sydney team, or I've got my Australian team. And then I have the Philippines team, or then I have the VAs, or then I have like, you know, this one VA who does like back office processing, I really disagree with even wording it that way. But I think it's, you know, it's the intention behind it. If your mindset and your mentality is that you have an Australian team, and then you have like, some back office processing being done in the Philippines, that's not really a team that's outsourcing, or that's process outsourcing. And so I want you to think about your team, as an actual team, no matter where their location is, you know, someone is working from home, or from an office or from a different location, and they just happen to be in a different country. But the most important thing here, guys, is that when you hire and recruit this team that you treat them as actual team members. Now, not only is that going to build a better culture overall, but if you think about the personal motivation of your team, if I said to Regina, hey, like you, you know, you're my you're my VA, you're just you're just here to do VA work, but you're not really part of the you know, you're not really part of it genius, you're just a VA, have a think about how her motivation or her engagement with the company might be on a human level on a human level of actually working with us. So that's my that's my hot tip. Number one is making sure that you're building out the team and everyone actually feels like team. So what does that mean? Well, that means that you have to have some way of doing your Friday night drinks as a team. It means that when you're doing your weekly team meeting, everyone is dialed in. It means that when you're doing your training, and you're onboarding, you don't have like a separate session for your Australian team, and a separate session for your international team members, you do it with everyone together. And there's a few hurdles that you have to jump through with that it means that Oh, now we have to, you know, we always have to do it via Hangout, or we always have to do it in a group setting. And you've got to be really careful, especially if you have an office, you might not be in there right now. But you have to be really careful about having like side conversations with staff that are locally accessible, that you may not keep your international team informed about. So these are some of the like, you know, day one, first steps going from moving around to crawling and from crawling to walking that you need to get right to not alienate your remote team, Reg, maybe you can speak to that a little bit, you know, maybe on the team, you know, the difference between them feeling like VAs versus feeling like part of a company, because I think that's a big thing. How do you how do you handle that? And what are your thoughts around that?

Speaker 2: So especially in the Philippines, BPO is very big in Philippines. So you need to when during the hiring process during the interview process, I think what's to take note in there is set expectations. Is this job for is for a long term or is this job is for a part time or just for a short term? And then yeah, it will help managing expectation of that applicant or of that future employee. Are they going to do their job? Well, because if you guys set proper expectations, it will help and inspire them. Oh, I have these. These are their future plans for me. I can get more I can give more to this company. And I can also have more and learn a lot from this company can grow more because nowadays, future freelancers or online job applicants are more into like long term than short term.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And basically employees cruising between contracts with different companies. And you know, like they're always chasing the next contract that will pay them a little bit more or they're, you know, working for two or three people at the same time. And all of those things just they don't work. If you want to have a functioning remote team that's going to be with you for a long time, because you just can't have you know, you can't onboard someone and then have them disappear after a couple of months. It like it's just not sustainable.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more expensive, actually, on like, training people again and again, then. Yeah.

Speaker 1: So I want to jump into a hiring hiring process now. And Reg, I'd like to cover off some job ad examples. And so maybe you might like to bring up a couple of those in the background while I'm talking about that. So when we hire the job site that we use the most is online jobs.ph. If you are first starting out with your first one, two or three staff in an international team, especially in the Philippines, I'd recommend you probably go with an agency, it's going to be nearly twice the price of hiring someone directly, but they're just going to take care of all the HR, the onboarding, the training, they're going to train them how to work with Australian businesses and all those kinds of things. However, if you're game, you can absolutely go ahead and hire directly, we're going to show you how we're doing that, because that's what we do these days. About half of our staff come from referrals from other team members. And we give I think it's a two or $300 bonus. If someone refers a friend, and then they stay for six months, they get a they get a bonus payment, which is a nice little payment. The other half of people that we hire typically get from this website, online jobs.ph. There's a number of other job websites for online workers in the Philippines. But this is the one that we've had the most luck from it's been barely consistent, which is pretty cool. Now, there are other options like Upwork and freelancer, stay the hell away from those. They're good for contract work. Like if you want a video editor to just work for you like by the hour, but if you want a full time staff member, and we are paying everyone full time salaries, where you know, with benefits and everything else, we're going to go through the benefits and what we do. But just stay away from those contracting and VA sites, because that's where all the professional VAs hang out, you're looking for someone who wants a career and the staff members, Reg, and I'd love some extra thoughts on this from from you in a second. The staff members that have done really, really well with us are those that have come from a corporate background. So either like a management position of some sort in a call center, or in in some other corporate, and many of them are actually working from home for the first time, many of them have been going to an office, and we need to kind of do a bit of teaching on teaching them to work from home, I would rather teach someone to work from home, then then try and have them unlearn being a VA, you know, being a professional VA, because that's, you know, just impossible. Basically, Reg, do you want to share a little bit about the criteria of the people that you look for when you're hiring?

Speaker 2: Sure. One of the things that we do when we look at employees who apply for our job post is that look at the resume, and see how many years are they staying in certain companies? It's very basic. Yeah. But it doesn't mean guys that if they have like if they've stayed short term on certain companies, that they're not really for your company for a long term. So maybe just ask why? Because there are also certain reasons that, you know, they stay there shorter. But yeah, most of our employees that really also stay with us in average for two to three years have been with our company also longer. And as what Pete said, they're like in the position where supervisor managerial, so they have a lot of experience already in the in big companies. And then they're in out just like, they want to work at home and avoid traffic and those, you know, avoid pollution and those kind of such. And so and then they also want to, you know, be career oriented, also like, but also still be with family also.

Speaker 1: And I think like, that's, it's even more so than Australia, because like everyone, everyone looks at like, how long you've been, you know, and if you're in a different job in every six months, they'll see that on the resume, but Filipinos in particular, like if you're a career person, like you'll be there five or six years, like super loyal, and we don't and we don't even see that with with Australian, especially young people. I mean, we're, you know, primarily hiring young people, the age group that we hire, I would say reg is like 28 to 35.

Speaker 2: Would that be a moment? Yeah, yeah. So that's when he's an

Speaker 1: early 30s. Yeah, that's like, it's a good, it's a good age, because like young and dynamic, and tech savvy. But also, they've probably done a few years in in corporate. And also they're probably or they may already have like a, you know, a young family. And that means that, you know, they've got a partner, they're married, they're kind of like the Filipino version of settles, which is like, you know, you've got your partner in your set. And so then it's like, okay, you know, they're just happy to be in a good, fulfilling job in a good workplace and want to continue to further their career with a good company. And, you know, it's so important what you said, Reg, about they want to grow, they want to be a part of, you know, a good company, they don't actually want to float around.

Speaker 2: One thing that I need to add there, Pete, is that most of these employees are moving and work at home, aside from like traffic issues is that in the office base employment, there's like very toxic. Yeah, that toxic in the office. So that's lesser in terms in working at home.

Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I'd say a part of that is probably the dynamic of a small business versus a large corporate and BPO is especially right. You've got like 1000s or 10s of 1000s of people. And there's, yeah, there's other cultural things with that how that translates to workers that you want to hire.