The Pros and Cons of Hiring Help

A lot of Filipinos who have gone abroad to enjoy life with the greenback miss one thing, hired help.   Life in the US of A is great, they say, and you don’t need hired help to make life good. They boast of gadgets and gizmos for every conceivable task from answering machines to ride-on mowers. But a short vacation here in ‘Pinas and they’re quick to quip how more advanced technology here is. If the US of A has every conceivable electronic toy, we have the ONE and ONLY time-tested voice activated household help to do everything all your gadgets do.

“Tubig!” Voila, 5 secs it’s on your hand. “Honk! Honk! less than a minute, your gate opens and next morning before you leave for work, it’s all shiny and clean. Thos are just some of the few things our voice activated wonder can do.

What I am talking about it actually, hired help. Like a game of Simon says, most of whatever you say, your help will do for you albeit imperfectly so. But then again, you can always ask them to do it again. Although like most Filipino families who hire help, I belong to one who treats their help like family. I call our ‘governess’ (as what westerners would say) Mama and our Chaffeur Papa. They’ve been with us over 30 years and have raised their family while working for us. Let me digress a bit – their girl is graduating as a nursing student next year from one of Cebu’s best nursing schools and their son is applying for college… he hope’s to get into one of Manila’s best universities through a scholarship. I guess my parents raised us to treat them as equals.

Hired help is good but if you have family who can help you, hired help becomes better =)

Work-Family Balance

I’ve been toying with the idea of resigning from my job so I could stay at home and be with my kids.  It’s not because I find work tiring.  Although it does drive you to exhaustion, it has been a very valuable learning and growing experience for me.  It’s just that when I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to  “have time for my kids.” And my job doesn’t allow that much.  I have a regular 8-5 job but the pay isn’t much so when I get home, I do some e-tailing and often I meet buyers intersted in whatever product or service I’m selling for the month…  which leaves me with just a wee bit of time to enjoy with my 2 little angels.

A few weeks back, I sat in a talk by Ma. Victoriua Q. Caparas, PhD, on New Trends in Work-Life Balance. The first question she asked the audience was, what is the difference between work-life balance and work-family balance.  Right then and there, I knew I was in the right place.  You see, here in the Philippines, when you ask someone how life is, he’d automatically talk about his family.  Family=Life, Life=Family.  It is unusual to find a successful family man who would equate life with something else.

 Here were some interesting tidbits she shared with us: In China, well-being is equal to being a married man with kids.  In Hong Kong, family-friendly policies are ineffective vis-a-vis the culture of reciprocity.  In Hapan, Karoshi is common – telling you that employees doe not need reduced work hours.  In Korea, day care centers are inefffective as they are in the Philippines coz people don’t trust leaving their kids to just anyone.  Mainly, in Asia, the career curve of women follows an M-curve where women lie-low and stay at home when the kids are young while pursuing successful careers awaiting babies and after a brief haitus, pursuing them again once the kids are old enough.  Did you know that everywhere in the world men work longer hours?  But in the Philippines, women work longer hours…  only here!  Why?  Becuase women are pressured to be good mothers & great providers.  Men don’t understand shared parenting here as much, but gladly, the younger dads show promise moving towards that trend. 

Although most Pinoy families enjoy the extra hands from the household help, the increasing number leaving for abroad for better pay (including engineers, lawyers and doctors) as domestic help, is really decreasing the supply of competent help.  So much for that… 

Many mothers face ask the same questions I ask.  Should I quit?  or the more harmless What should I do to balance my life?  I guess whatever your decision is, we should always remember that the basic nucleus of society is the family.  It is great to hear though that big corporations have seen the importance of family life for their employees and have taken an active stance in ensuring a family supportive culture.  I should work for one…