Philippine Report: Learning About the Current Situation in the Philippines from a Japanese Manager of a Philippine Corporation

At our company, we hold a company-wide morning meeting every Monday at the start of the workday.
In this system, the role of facilitator rotates among the participants. Each participant chooses a topic in advance, either "What will we talk about?" or "I'd like to hear from so-and-so," and prepares accordingly before the morning meeting.
At our morning meeting the other day, an employee who works as a manager at our group company, LH&Creatives Inc., shared the current situation and realities of the Philippines that you wouldn't know if you were in Japan.

Utilizing the entire morning assembly for internal branding

Our company has a group company (local subsidiary) called LH&creatives Inc. in the Philippines (Manila).
We're using an IT outsourcing company, and they're helping us out with a portion of our project.
LH&creatives was established in 2016 in Makati, Manila's largest city.
At the end of 2019, we completed our move from our cramped office to a larger one, and we intended to make a fresh start in fiscal year 2020.

Just as things were settling down, the coronavirus began to spread worldwide. (It seems they call it COVID-19 in the Philippines.)
In the Philippines, under the strong directive of President Duterte, a lockdown (stay-at-home order) will be implemented ahead of the rest of the world to prevent the spread of infection.
In order to cope with the sudden policy changes at our Philippine subsidiary, we had to have our staff take their computers (desktops and monitors) home and quickly transition to remote work.
However, despite this lockdown, which is said to be the longest in the world, the number of infections continues to rise...
The Philippine people and foreign companies like ours are being tossed around by the erratic policies of the Philippine government.
Restaurants imposed restrictions on the number of people allowed to dine indoors, and similar restrictions were put in place on the number of people allowed to come to work in company offices.
Furthermore, each region has its own COVID-19 related measures, and it is not uncommon for staff to be unable to come to work because buses and shared vans have been suspended in the areas where they live.

Given these circumstances, we decided to conduct all communication with local staff, as well as our planned recruitment activities, entirely remotely.
However, communicating in English and conducting interviews over the unstable internet connection in the Philippines proved to be quite challenging for us.

Furthermore, although we had planned travel schedules for our Japanese subsidiary staff, the Philippine government's policies kept changing, resulting in numerous cancellations.
This period made me acutely aware of the difficulties of managing overseas subsidiaries and staff.

 

COVID-19 situation in the Philippines

From here, we will use materials prepared by the Japanese manager of LH&creatives for our morning meeting to introduce the current situation of COVID-19 in the Philippines, its impact, and the resulting environmental changes.

 

COVID-19 infection situation, etc.

Japan's population is approximately 126.3 million, and the Philippines' population is approximately 108 million, so there isn't actually much difference. (It's surprising how large the Philippines' population is!)
According to the data shown in the diagram above, the proportion of infected people in the population is about twice that of Japan in the Philippines.

Furthermore, when looking at the percentage of the population that has received at least one dose of the vaccine, it is less than one-third of the population in Japan.

*Please refer to the attached document for the measurement dates of each value.

 

World's longest lockdown

As I mentioned at the beginning, we too suffered from this lockdown…
Filipinos were also unable to leave their homes, required permits to go out, and had to deal with strict measures such as checkpoints set up everywhere when the lockdown began.

Furthermore, while many Japanese companies had established a presence in the Philippines, it appears that some have since withdrawn.

 

Changes in daily life due to COVID-19

In the Philippines, the COVID-19 pandemic is referred to as a "pandemic," and its effects extend to daily life.

Strict lockdown

 

If the number of infected people increases, strict measures not seen in Japan, such as lockdowns, will be implemented, and in the worst case, violations could lead to arrest.
Staff members who were walking outside during curfew hours were reportedly stopped and questioned by the police.

 

Restaurants and other establishments are also subject to the restrictions.

When in-store dining was prohibited, they apparently started operating outside, setting up chairs and tables in front of the shop, based on the rather illogical reasoning that "it's okay if we eat outside?"
The Philippines has a climate similar to Japan's summer, so it must be quite hot outside... but a cold beer might taste good.

 

Are you being tracked?

 

Your entry and exit from stores such as shopping malls will be tracked.
Although it seems that stricter controls are in place than in Japan, the management is apparently lax, with no one noticing if someone fills in random information by hand...

Mandatory wearing of masks and face shields

It seems that wearing masks and face shields is required much more strictly than in Japan.
In the Philippines, there are always security staff at the entrances and exits of shopping malls and office buildings, so you will definitely be checked there.
Since the climate is like summer in Japan all year round, it must be difficult to live with a face shield and mask on.

Office restrictions

At LH&creatives, we use simple partitions made by attaching transparent sheets to cardboard frames, as shown in the diagram above.

 

What about in terms of actual daily life?

The employee who provided the report from the Philippines is fortunately healthy and continuing to work. (According to them, they only have some back pain.)
In any case, I hope that all the Filipino staff will be able to come to work and get back to work.

Our company has organized training trips to our Philippine subsidiary, providing opportunities for direct communication with local staff in the Philippines.
Actually, we had planned that training trip, but then the coronavirus pandemic forced us to cancel all our plans...
I sincerely hope that we can once again travel freely as before.