Philippines Christmas Party

Recently I have a chance to understand the Philippines working culture from the management aspects with SME size company.

We were in Manila on 14th December, almost every company have their Christmas celebration on this Friday. As Christians are the majority religion in the Philippines, this is a must-have event for Philippine employees, it is like the year-end party for Chinese employees. It’s the best day to have a team building, unite the relationship between managers and employees, encourage employees to recognize themselves to be part of the family, so they can work in the company longer.

This is also my first Philippine office Christmas party experience, although this company was 1 year old, this is also their first annual holiday event, every employee put efforts to discuss and prepare to make this event surprisingly well-organized and professional, with the limit budget. Everyone is so happy working on this date.

After the working hours, everyone gets dressed nicely in their second official dress and makeup nicely that you don’t recognize how they normally look, the office changed to the joyful atmosphere by Christmas decorations.

We have 2 hosts, they are so professional that I wasn’t aware they are also our employees, they promoted everyone to hashtag company name in social media for tonight’s event.

There’s a guest list upon checking will get a coupon for drinks and meal. We outsource the catering, DJ, lighting, singer, dancer, and drummer. The admin team prepared the presentation and awards of the employees. The party starts with 3 drummers loudly get everyone’s attention, 2 African dance, employees starts to get the food.

Later on, there’s a female singer amazed everyone by her beautiful voice. I thought she finished her singing, later, she sang You Raise Me Up, every Philippines employees start to be serious and stand silence, all the managers’ team although are foreigners understood that they need to respect Philippines’ culture stood as well. I thought the serious moment finished, later, she sang the Philippines National Anthem, every Philippines raise up their hand on the chest and sang the song together. This was a great shock for me because I never sing my National Anthem at Christmas party.

To encourage employees to have more motivation for company sales, showing their pride is important. Normally, there is a top 3 employee weekly ranking on the wall. Additionally, with every successful sale in the office, everyone will applause for him or her.

On Christmas party, we reward top 3 employees of the year and top 3 team manager with company certificates that they can put on their table. Other than working performance, we have 2 competitions, team dance and fashion catwalk. We have 4 teams, each of them have a video to show before the dance, showing how do they rehearsal and preparing the dance materials. I found out the employee’s dance could bring more laughs than professional performers. Fashion cloth competition also surprised me how glittering the cloth could be. From the understanding of their culture, it would be lovely to give the last one a little price as well.

I’m pleased to have this honor to attend this event with them, we had so many laughs and great memory together. At the same time, I feel a great responsibility to help the company sustain for longer operation. I believe it will be hard decisions for the owner to decide close a company, as it connects to so many employees to bring money home and make their family happy. Wish all of you a nice Christmas with your loved ones.