Vulnerability of Filipino workers

LEARNING & INNOVATION

Last column we shared with you some characterizations made by Dr./Professors Ernesto Franco and Tomas Andres of Filipino management styles. Today let’s discuss the Filipino working style. I am not sure who did this research but I found these notes from seminars I’ve attended. I will try to explain them as best as I could remember.

Limitations of Filipino workers

• No confidence in oneself. Filipino workers are and sound tentative. Our favorite expression is “Susubukan ko” or “I will try.” We could learn from Nike’s “Just do it!” motto.

• Indoctrinated with colonial mentality. We subscribe to the teachings of foreign management gurus. They will spend their salary on foreign brands or copies of foreign brands, rather than be caught using local brands. We think that fruits from Thailand or Japan are better than ours. Ours are natural, not genetically modified.

• Overly relaxed. Go around any workplace here and you see workers talking to one another (not about the job) during work hours or slouching on their chairs or wearing sleepers, even flip-flops in the workplace. There seems to be no sense of urgency. The most irritating are restaurant wait employees chatting as you try to catch their attention because you are painfully choking or the fly in your soup is now drowning.

• Not a Follow-up People (Ningas Cogon). We are great starters, but we do not necessarily finish what we started. We seem to hate writing reports or documenting whatever we are doing. Is might be the reason there are not many Filipino authors or writers.

• Holiday Mentality. The new President will be sworn into office on June 30; the first question is “may pasok ba?” (Do we need to come to work?) We have regular holidays, special non-working holidays, special working holidays, local holidays, boss’ birthday, somebody getting married, etc. We take long lunch breaks and sometimes take a detour to the shops after a meeting outside the office.

• Lack of managerial and organizational effectiveness. It is only recently that those in leadership positions are made to attend courses on management and leadership. And let’s admit it, we are used to having mom and dad or ate and kuya or tita and tito and various helpers around to think for us, make decisions for us, solve problems for us, even confront the bully for us, talk in our behalf, do everything for us including spoon feeding us. We know to be served, not to manage our affairs.

• Lack of self-reliant tenacity. Many Filipino workers lack persistence, drive and determination to use their potentials and talents. They feel a need to be pushed and to be pursued.

• Lack of Planning. When we look back, it is to find who to blame, not to evaluate and learn lessons from the past. When we look forward, it is as far as our nose tip. “Bahala na.” “Que sera sera” Whatever will be, will be.

• Overly Authority Conscious. Everybody is a “Sir” or a Ma’am” or Ate” or “Kuya.”

Most Filipinos are followers. To ensure that something is done, most job orders are preceded with “sabi ni boss” (according to the boss). “Don’t cross the street, there is a policeman behind the post.” or “Let’s go! There is no policeman anyway.” “Let’s do this and not do that, the boss is on vacation.”

Where are we coming from? According to a study made by Ateneo de Manila University for Philippine Airlines, these are parts of the Filipino value set or his ideas about desirable states of affairs and persisting motives that lead him to choose certain goals instead of another. These explains some of the whys Filipinos workers act, think and do as they are.

• Human Concern (Pakikipagkapwa)
• Social Acceptance
• Feeling for another (Pakikiramdam)
• Family
• Authority
• Discipline (reactive, after the fact)
• Desire for economics & social betterment
• Patience and endurance
• Degree of gratitude (Utang-na-Loob)

How do these tie the loose ends about the productivity issues in your own workplace? Next week we shall discuss how Filipinos communicate and how we could be motivated to do a better job here in the Philippines. (They are tops and most desired workers in other countries.) –Moje Ramos-Aquino, FPM, Manila Times

innovationcamp@yahoo.com