Hiring in the Philippines: A Guide for UK Companies

Hiring your first person in the Philippines often stalls in the same place. Not on the question of whether the talent is capable, but on the quiet worry that you are about to get something wrong that only surfaces much later, in a tribunal, an audit, or a due diligence process.

This article is informational only and is not legal, tax or accounting advice. It does not take account of your circumstances and you should take your own professional advice before acting. What follows is a map of the questions worth asking, not answers to them.

1. Contractor or employee: how you work together matters more than the label

The most common misunderstanding is that worker status is settled by the document. Generally it is not. In the UK and in the Philippines alike, the assessment tends to look at the substance of the working relationship, and a contract that describes someone as an independent contractor may carry limited weight if the day-to-day reality points elsewhere. This is worth understanding before you design the role, because the design is what shapes the exposure.

The signals that tend to attract attention are not exotic. They are the ordinary habits of a busy team:

• Control. Who decides when the work happens, how it is done, and what tools are used? Fixed shifts you set, clock-in requirements, and step-by-step direction of method all point one way. Agreed outputs, deadlines and a reasonable overlap window point another.
• Exclusivity. Is the person free to work for others, or have you effectively taken up all their capacity and expect first call on their time?
• Integration. Do they appear on the org chart, attend performance reviews, manage your staff, or hold a company email address and job title indistinguishable from an employee's?
• Substitution and financial risk. Can they send a qualified substitute? Do they provide their own equipment, carry their own costs, and stand to profit or lose from how efficiently they work?

None of these is decisive on its own, and none of them is inherently a problem. They are simply the things an adviser is likely to ask you about. Two practical points. First, get advice that covers both jurisdictions, because a UK view of status does not settle the Philippine position, and Philippine labour law has its own tests and its own protections. Second, whatever you agree, keep the working practices consistent with it. Drift between the paperwork and the reality is where problems tend to begin.

2. Intellectual property: get the assignment in writing

Where an employee creates work in the course of their employment, ownership often sits with the employer by default. Where a contractor creates it, the starting position in many jurisdictions is that the creator owns the copyright and the client has, at best, a licence. That is a material difference if the work is your product, your codebase, your brand assets or your written content, and it is the kind of thing an acquirer or investor is likely to test.

Cross-border work adds a second layer. Default rules differ by country, so relying on an implied position is a poor plan when the creator is in Manila and the company is in London. A written assignment removes the guesswork: it should be signed by the individual actually doing the work, cover existing and future work under the engagement, address moral rights and pre-existing materials, and specify the governing law. Keep a clean chain of title — if a subcontractor touches the work, the assignment needs to reach them too.

PH Talents provides a ready-to-sign contract pack that includes an IP assignment, alongside NDAs and a device policy. Your own solicitor should still review it against your circumstances.

3. Data protection: UK GDPR travels with your data

If you are a UK controller, your obligations do not stop at the border. Personal data you are responsible for — customer records, HR files, support tickets, anything with a name attached — stays your responsibility when it is accessed or processed by someone working overseas. In practice, access from the Philippines is generally treated as a transfer of personal data outside the UK, so it is something to work through with your adviser rather than assume.

The things worth having in place before day one:

• A data schedule. Write down what personal data the person will touch, why, and on whose authority. You cannot protect what you have not catalogued.
• Access control. Least privilege, individual named accounts, multi-factor authentication, and a leaver process that actually revokes access on the day.
• A device policy. Disk encryption, screen locks, no personal cloud storage, no downloading client data to a home machine. Say it explicitly and have it signed.
• The right contractual terms. Whether the person is a processor or something else, and which transfer mechanism applies, is a question for your adviser or DPO. Ask it early — retrofitting is painful.

PH Talents handles personal data under UK GDPR and provides NDAs and a device policy in the engagement pack. Clients receive verification summaries only, never raw documents.

4. Paying someone abroad

Models differ in where the money goes. Some arrangements put a provider between you and the person doing the work: the provider employs or contracts the talent, invoices you, and pays them on. Those models exist for good reasons and suit some businesses. They do mean a third party sits in the payment chain, which is something your accountant and your adviser will want a clear picture of.

Ours works differently. The client contracts with the talent directly and pays them directly, at a rate the two of them agree between themselves. PH Talents is never the employer and never sits in the payment chain. We are an introduction and verification agency. That means the commercial terms are yours to set, and there is no dependency on us to keep the money moving.

Our fees are published. Direct Placement is a one-off fee of 25% of first-year pay. Placement plus Care Plan is 15% of first-year pay plus GBP 135 per talent per month, with a three-month minimum term then rolling monthly, which adds free replacement within 10 working days and keeps verification current. There is nothing to pay until you make a hire — posting a role, receiving a shortlist and interviewing are free — and every placement carries a six-month replacement guarantee. Speak to your accountant about how payments abroad, currency and any withholding should be handled in your books.

5. What a UK employment agency can and cannot do

This is worth knowing because it tells you something about the incentives of anyone you deal with. We operate under UK employment agency regulations — the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003. Among other things, those rules prohibit charging work-seekers a fee for finding them work.

So talent are never charged anything by PH Talents. Not for registration, not for verification, not for placement. We pay for the NBI clearance — the Philippine police clearance — ourselves. The fee comes from the client and only from the client, and only once a hire is made. If a provider asks candidates to pay, it is worth asking why.

Before you see anyone, every profile passes five checks: government photo ID matched to a live selfie, NBI clearance verified at source, PRC or TESDA credentials confirmed on the official government registry where applicable, employment history corroborated with documents, and two professional references contacted through their company. A profile failing any check never reaches a client.

Where to start

Write the role brief. We come back with a shortlist of three to five verified candidates within five business days. Interview them. And while you do, put the four questions above in front of your own solicitor and accountant — status, IP, data, payments — so that by the time you want to move, the answers are already yours.

PH TALENTS LTD is a UK-registered company, no. 17383205, at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. To talk it through, contact [email protected].

Frequently asked questions