Production work at quality. Design production, development, content, video editing, and the execution layer that consumes the largest share of delivery hours.
Analysis and reporting. Campaign reporting, data analysis, dashboard building, and the recurring client deliverables that are labour intensive and low variation.
Coordination. Project coordination, resource scheduling, quality checking and client communication support.
Specialist execution in the mainstream marketing, development and creative tooling.
Less suited: the client relationship itself at senior level, and the strategy work that clients are specifically paying a named person for.
Market Guides
Hiring in the Philippines for agencies and professional services firms
In short
For agencies and professional services firms the calculation is delivery margin rather than headcount cost. The Philippine market supplies production, analysis and coordination roles well. The recurring mistake is hiring against peak demand and then carrying the cost through troughs, because Philippine employment does not flex.
Agencies come to this decision from a different direction than product companies. The question is not capacity in the abstract, it is whether a given margin can be delivered at a given price. That changes which roles make sense and how the team should be shaped.
What the market supplies well for agency delivery
The utilisation trap
This is the failure mode specific to agencies.
A firm wins a large account, hires against that demand, and the account ends or reduces. In a market with flexible staffing, headcount adjusts. In the Philippines it does not.
Employment carries security of tenure. Employment cannot be ended because a client left. Redundancy is available as an authorised cause but must be genuine, with the position actually abolished, fair selection criteria, 30 days written notice to the employee and to the Department of Labor and Employment, and separation pay.
Using fixed term or contractor arrangements to work around this is the structure most likely to be reassessed as employment, because the four fold test looks at how the relationship operates rather than what it is called.
The workable answer is to size the permanent team to your trough rather than your peak, and to have a plan for peak that does not depend on reducing headcount afterwards.
A firm wins a large account, hires against that demand, and the account ends or reduces. In a market with flexible staffing, headcount adjusts. In the Philippines it does not.
Employment carries security of tenure. Employment cannot be ended because a client left. Redundancy is available as an authorised cause but must be genuine, with the position actually abolished, fair selection criteria, 30 days written notice to the employee and to the Department of Labor and Employment, and separation pay.
Using fixed term or contractor arrangements to work around this is the structure most likely to be reassessed as employment, because the four fold test looks at how the relationship operates rather than what it is called.
The workable answer is to size the permanent team to your trough rather than your peak, and to have a plan for peak that does not depend on reducing headcount afterwards.
What clients notice, and what they do not
In most cases clients do not notice where production happens, and increasingly do not ask, provided quality and responsiveness hold.
What they do notice: turnaround times that improve because work happens while they sleep, or degrade because a question now takes a day. Which of those you get is a process decision rather than a talent one.
Some client contracts contain data location or subcontracting clauses. Worth checking before rather than after, particularly in regulated sectors.
Being straightforward about your delivery model tends to work better than being vague about it, because vagueness invites the assumption that something is being concealed.
What they do notice: turnaround times that improve because work happens while they sleep, or degrade because a question now takes a day. Which of those you get is a process decision rather than a talent one.
Some client contracts contain data location or subcontracting clauses. Worth checking before rather than after, particularly in regulated sectors.
Being straightforward about your delivery model tends to work better than being vague about it, because vagueness invites the assumption that something is being concealed.
Structuring for margin rather than cost
The mistake is treating this as a cost reduction on existing roles. The firms that gain most restructure the work.
That usually means separating the parts of delivery that require the client relationship from the parts that do not, and being honest about how much of a senior person's time is currently spent on the second category.
The margin improvement comes from the reallocation, not from the salary difference. A firm that hires production support and does not change how senior time is used has bought capacity, not margin.
That usually means separating the parts of delivery that require the client relationship from the parts that do not, and being honest about how much of a senior person's time is currently spent on the second category.
The margin improvement comes from the reallocation, not from the salary difference. A firm that hires production support and does not change how senior time is used has bought capacity, not margin.
What to plan for
Statutory employer costs of roughly 11 to 16 percent depending on seniority, falling as salary rises because the main contributions cap out.
A team sized to sustainable demand rather than to the current pipeline.
Overlap hours decided by client expectations rather than convenience, with night differential of at least 10 percent applying between 10pm and 6am where the roster requires it.
And quality process that is explicit, because in an agency the cost of a quality failure is a client rather than a rework.
A team sized to sustainable demand rather than to the current pipeline.
Overlap hours decided by client expectations rather than convenience, with night differential of at least 10 percent applying between 10pm and 6am where the roster requires it.
And quality process that is explicit, because in an agency the cost of a quality failure is a client rather than a rework.
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