Top-notch employ­ees from the Philip­pines

The restau­rant indus­try is a vis­i­ble field of busi­ness in many ways, reflect­ing changes in cit­i­zens’ pur­chas­ing pow­er and broad­er phe­nom­e­na such as con­se­quences of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and Russian’s acts of war in Ukraine. Although the num­ber of restau­rant busi­ness­es was on a slight upward trend in 2018–2022, the first signs of labor short­ages and a decline in the attrac­tive­ness of the indus­try were already vis­i­ble before the impact of the pan­dem­ic.

– Accord­ing to sur­veys con­duct­ed by The Finnish Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Asso­ci­a­tion (MaRa ry), the attrac­tive­ness of our indus­try had already been declin­ing for years. This was reflect­ed in the num­ber of stu­dents enter­ing the field and the dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing skilled staff. To ease the sit­u­a­tion, region­al attrac­tive­ness work­ing groups were estab­lished, whose activ­i­ties were sup­posed to start already in 2020. The start was delayed due to the COVID-19, but now the activ­i­ties have been launched, says Sari-Hele­na Fors­man, who has exten­sive expe­ri­ence as a restau­rant entre­pre­neur.

– How­ev­er, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was the final straw for the indus­try. As a result of the restric­tions, restau­rants were forced to close their doors and employ­ees were laid off. Some moved to work in oth­er sec­tors, such as retail, while oth­ers went back to school, and so on. When restau­rants reopened after the lock­down, a mas­sive labor short­age forced them to adapt their oper­a­tions to the avail­abil­i­ty of work­ers.

– The restau­rant indus­try is still in a sit­u­a­tion where one way to enable busi­ness devel­op­ment and con­ti­nu­ity is labor based immi­gra­tion, says Sari-Hele­na.

The response to the acute labor short­age began to take shape. Sev­er­al local restau­rant busi­ness­es start­ed to see new pos­si­bil­i­ties in bring­ing in labor from abroad. Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mar­jo Miinalainen, who works as a recruit­ment agent, start­ed to take form through net­work­ing. The goal was to cre­ate an open, eth­i­cal, and above all, legal­ly com­pli­ant process for bring­ing in Fil­ipino labor to meet the needs of busi­ness­es.

Trans­paren­cy takes time when bring­ing in labor from the Philip­pines

The busi­ness group man­aged by the Fors­man fam­i­ly includes Puis­to­la’s restau­rant, can­ti­na, café, and bak­ery, as well as Restau­rant Pan­nu.

– Cur­rent­ly, 11 of our 40 employ­ees are Fil­ipino. Inter­na­tion­al­i­ty in the work­place is famil­iar to us, as Eng­lish has been one of the work­ing lan­guages in the kitchen even before the recruit­ment of Fil­ipino work­ers, says Sari-Hele­na.

The first step in the recruit­ment process is find­ing suit­able labor. Knowl­edge of the local labor mar­ket is essen­tial for suc­ceed­ing. This part falls on Mar­jo’s shoul­ders, as she has built a strong under­stand­ing and net­work with recruit­ment agen­cies while liv­ing in the Philip­pines.

– There is a vast num­ber of recruit­ment com­pa­nies in the Philip­pines, as labor is one of the coun­try’s largest exports. It is cru­cial to find part­ners who oper­ate with­in the legal frame­work and with whom trust can be built.

Care­ful­ly cho­sen and inter­viewed employ­ees are direct­ed to the Finnish Immi­gra­tion Ser­vice’s Philip­pine part­ner. A full med­ical exam­i­na­tion is required at the begin­ning of the process because it sets its own con­di­tions for the imple­men­ta­tion of work-based immi­gra­tion. Future employ­ees often wait months in the Philip­pines to go to the autho­rized part­ner to prove their iden­ti­ty and give their fin­ger­prints. Employ­ment cer­tifi­cates are also checked at this stage.

When the pro­ce­dure is imple­ment­ed accord­ing to the Finnish, Philip­pine, and inter­na­tion­al laws, it sure­ly takes time.

– The laws and reg­u­la­tions in Philip­pines are quite hard for the eth­i­cal recruit­ment. It is said in the law what is expect­ed from the recruit­ing com­pa­ny. For exam­ple, the apart­ment must be arranged even though the recruit­ed employ­ees do pay the rent by them­selves, Mar­jo clears out.

– This is about doing every­thing the right way, Sari-Hele­na agrees to that.

Sari-Hele­na Fors­man and Mar­jo Miinalainen.

Life in Oulu through Philip­pine eyes

Julius Idi­an moved to Oulu in the sum­mer 2022 around the sun­shine of the night­less night.

– When we moved here, the employ­er paid for our visa appli­ca­tions, plain tick­ets and had arranged accom­mo­da­tion for us. If we need­ed any­thing, they didn’t hes­i­tate to help us, Julius says. He seems very hap­py about how every­thing was han­dled.

He works in Puistola’s kitchen as a cook. He describes his work as busy, yet he finds it is easy to find a good bal­ance between work and free time. He has found good rou­tines in his dai­ly life – work­ing in an inspir­ing job, going out to meet friends or to do some exer­cise and then relax­ing at home.

– I have a fam­i­ly back home in Philip­pines. We have video calls very often, which is real­ly impor­tant to me. Then we can feel like actu­al­ly being togeth­er.

Jayson Ril­lo has lived in Oulu for about 9 months. He works as a wait­er. He also has his fam­i­ly in Philip­pines and keep­ing in touch is a pre­cious resource. Some­times they are miss­ing their fam­i­lies a lot and it can make them sad. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing their fam­i­lies here in Fin­land is in the future. How­ev­er, he thinks Oulu is an amaz­ing place.

– It doesn’t mat­ter how cold it is, you can still ride your bicy­cle any­where. Even if it’s ‑20 degrees. I love to ride my bicy­cle, Jayson smiles.

Jayson says that he also meets oth­er inter­na­tion­al res­i­dents of Oulu in his free time. Some of them are stu­dents and some are work­ing.

Jayson Ril­lo and Julius Idi­an.

Work­ing in Oulu

– Dur­ing my first work­days, I was a lit­tle bit lost. Yet every­body was friend­ly, but qui­et too. Finnish peo­ple don’t like to talk too much. When you start to talk with them, they will start to open up. If they like you, they will also help you, invite you to par­ties and so on, Jayson talks about his experiences.

They like their workplace’s cul­ture. It is friend­ly, gen­er­ous, and sup­port­ive.

– I have Finnish cowork­ers, but they are also my friends and I take them as my fam­i­ly, Julius describes. That is how they describe their way of work­ing. The Philip­pine style is excel­lent for cre­at­ing sup­port­ive and warm work­ing cul­ture.

– This kind­ness in their char­ac­ter is also present in the way they do cus­tomer ser­vice – with sin­cer­i­ty and a smile. Those are very pre­cious skills in cater­ing busi­ness, Sari-Hele­na states.

– I love the way they have trust for Fil­ipinos as work­ers, even if we don’t speak Finnish, Julius and Jayson say. When Jayson is asked how the Finnish clients are accept­ing him, he tells that at first clients are usu­al­ly sur­prised about a non-Finnish speak­ing wait­er.

– They say “oh, you don’t speak Finnish”, but then they con­tin­ue “don’t wor­ry, we like you here” and that makes me feel more com­fort­able.

“I love the way they have trust for Fil­ipinos, even if we don’t speak Finnish.”

To endorse the team spir­it, Puis­to­la orga­nizes team build­ing events for their work­ers.

– Dur­ing the team day we had activ­i­ties and so much fun. After­wards we had din­ner around a long restau­rant table with a lot of talk­ing, Julius tells while going through his mem­o­ries.

Why to choose Fil­ipinos? And why choose to come to Fin­land?

– What strong­ly moti­vates me in this work, is that I know Fil­ipinos are good work­ers. They are excep­tion­al­ly skilled in deal­ing with peo­ple, describes Mar­jo. She also high­lights good experiences in the health­care sec­tor.

– They do their jobs with a smile. In the nurs­ing home for elder­ly peo­ple, they have the ener­gy to talk to the res­i­dents and may even sing while work­ing. Their approach to work is in a class of its own.

– It’s true that Fil­ipinos exude sun­shine, smiles, and imme­di­a­cy. As employ­ees, they are also com­mit­ted and loy­al. They are used to work­ing and they are here to work, Sari-Hele­na says.

Employ­ees com­mit to a two-year fixed-term employ­ment con­tract with Puis­to­la when mov­ing to Fin­land. Already in the job inter­view, the employ­ee’s thoughts on build­ing a more per­ma­nent life and future in Fin­land are mapped out. Most employ­ees would like to stay in Fin­land after two years and bring their fam­i­lies here.

– Fin­land is seen as safe, equal, fair, and clean. The Finnish nature image has a strong impact — cows graze freely on lush mead­ows, fish swim in clean waters, berries and mush­rooms can be picked your­self in the for­est.

Our ser­vices for com­pa­nies seek­ing inter­na­tion­al tal­ents

We here at Inter­na­tion­al House Oulu assist com­pa­nies with find­ing suit­able inter­na­tion­al employ­ees or interns through our exten­sive net­work of con­tacts. We specif­i­cal­ly tar­get inter­na­tion­al tal­ent already liv­ing in Fin­land or Oulu. BusinessOulu’s job seek­er data­base con­tains many indi­vid­u­als with for­eign back­grounds and exper­tise across var­i­ous fields of busi­ness.

Addi­tion­al­ly, we orga­nize recruit­ment events and cam­paigns that your com­pa­ny can par­tic­i­pate in, for exam­ple, check out the free Job­Corner. We also orga­nize infor­ma­tion ses­sions and coach­ing ses­sions on inter­na­tion­al recruit­ment.

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact:
Sal­la Hir­vo­nen, salla.hirvonen@businessoulu.com