Insightful seminars/briefings are one of the best freebies when you are in a corporate world. You get to hear the best speakers for free! Our company organized a briefing session of where the Philippine Economy is for 2010. It was given to the hands of Dr. Bernardo Villegas who was tasked to converse with us as to how our economy as well as the global aspect is moving for this year and the years forward.
The speaker gave us a lot of helpful facts as regards to how the economy may impact our business. But what stucked into my mind were the examples he gave about how marketable Filipinos are worldwide (this is in relation to the OFWs remittances which forms a big part of our economy's development).
Atlantis hotel in Dubai is one, if not the highest end hotels in Dubai. Come the global recession, the company had no choice but to slash off their workers as occupancy rate dropped to as low as 20%. All nationalities - Indians, Indonesians, Chinese, etc were retrenched... except for Filipinos. When he asked the management why, the answer was simple: Filipinos are flexible. They can multi-task. They can be a chambermaid or a bell boy in the morning, and they can instantly turn into fantastic singers by night.
There are restaurants in Spain who only hires Filipinos as waiters. Our speaker thought it might be because we were under the Spain for ages and that we fairly know the Spanish cultures, words, and way of living. To his surprise, he got a different answer: We hire Filipinos because they are the people who takes a bath everyday. It's a funny yet very insightful realization. Petty characteristic of ours yet turns out to be very essential to the other nationalities.
In the UK, Filipino nurses and caretakers are renowned for their tender loving care. In that country also, they are sensitive on the so-called equality of each nationality. With this dilema at hand, UK hospitals found a way to still tap Filipino nurses in a subtle way. In the list of qualifications, they included that a candidate must know how to speak Tagalog. Of course, it was just a scapegoat to being racist for them!
I was amazed as to how we are regarded by other nationalities. I was actually in awe. It was a good realization for me and made me prouder than ever.
Ah, Filipinos!
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