Become Extra Productive With a Virtual Assistant by Your Side

So, are you thinking of hiring a virtual assistant for your online side hustle, perhaps…?

Virtual Assistant or VA, in other words, is an assistant in demand among the modern tech-age entrepreneurs; VAs are also referred to as independent contractors.

So, if you ask yourself whether you need an online personal assistant or not, then start shoving in some actual insights from around the world.

Firstly, ask yourself, why you need to hire a virtual assistant while considering the following factors, such as:

• Are you piling up more workload nowadays than before; that needs extra support?
• Is your workplace located in an inconvenient location for your employees?
• Are you seeking a specialized worker for a particular function of your business?
• Can’t your workplace provide enough workspace for your employees?
• Are you thinking of cutting down employment costs?

If each of the above questions ends up with ‘yes’ then you may want to hire a virtual assistant for your business with proper consideration.

Before doing so, let’s dig up more associated factors on the virtual assistant and its viability around the globe.

How Can A Virtual Assistant Benefit You?

You may satisfy your query about a VA’s benefits in two ways:

• Expert Opinions
• General Aspects

Expert Opinions on VA Benefits

When we talk about experts, we definitely reckon to those who have already employed virtual assistants and ripped the fruits out of their dedicated performance.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world have admitted the benefits of appointing virtual assistants for getting their extra works done timely and productively.

I have shared a few valuable opinions from experts around the world below.

1. Dedicated Niche Focus

You are going to need specialists such as graphic designers, IT Network experts, accountants for bookkeeping, content creator for ads, and so on.

An efficient virtual assistant can focus on one such particular work of your business territory.

You may require hiring more than one VA for handling different specialized sides of your business remotely while you can operate the more revenue-generating aspects of the business, according to Yolanda Crowley, an Executive Assistant at The Home Depot.

2. Increasing Your Productivity

A virtual assistant can spare you the unproductive yet noticeably important tasks.

For instance, a remote data entry clerk may prove vital as he/she fills up all required day-to-day forms, employee database, customer payment information, payroll, etc. for your business.

It helps you go about stress-free daily while enables you to work out on your other potential business sides.

According to what Kevin Vandenboss, a commercial real estate broker from Vandeboss Commercial, Washington, said, an efficient virtual assistant can save you a significant amount of your time which you can utilize to grow your business in terms of marketing, client relation build-up, new investment, infrastructural development, etc.

3. Tick-off Daily Tasks & Ready for Tomorrow

Virtual assistantship may seem to be a remote work but its efficacy is worth a 24 hours office teamwork, opines James O. Ruane, a DUI defense attorney from Ruane Attorneys At Law, Connecticut!

Remote workers aka virtual assistants prove to be effective in terms of varying work shifts. You don’t need your existing full-time employees to overwork after office hours if the virtual assistants accomplish the relevant extra works overnight from a different part of the world, conveniently from their time-zone.

This way, necessary data, and information can be ready at hand overnight for the next morning’s meeting, presentation, proposal making, etc.

4. Cut on Employment and Office Costs

Travel agencies are clawing around the world with the help of virtual assistants while prudently managing their operational costs.

Chase Diamond from a well-known travel agency named The Discoverer, said,

I run a travel business so having virtual assistants in different countries throughout the world allows us to have a global footprint. My company is embracing the fully remote team structure so having virtual assistants allows us to work efficiently and effectively without having to spend money on physical office space…

What is a special side of your business that may be handled virtually from around the world? Besides, consider if that part of the business is manageable without having a physical office-space or full-time operates.

General Views on VA Benefits:

The regular advantages of appointing virtual assistant(s) can be summarized as below:

1. Abridged Skill Gaps

Recruiting a virtual assistant can be for the sake of filling in the gaps of certain skill-set.

When you find yourself in haywire regarding technical skills like graphics, networking, content creating, video/audio file editing, or online advertising, a skilled virtual assistant should be on call.

A virtual assistant meets the efficiency and quality requirement of business in a cheaper, quicker, and productive way.

2. Flexible Work Schedule

You need flexibility in your work schedule because no one wants to be saddled to a hectic daily working hour.

A virtual assistant comes in rescue by taking care of those works encountered outside your work schedule.

As a virtual assistant would work remotely in a different time-zone; you can utilize that schedule by aligning it with your time-zone.

This opposite-pole but simultaneous timeframes work effectively as your workload is always functioning from both ends.

3. Risk-free Business Transition

An entrepreneur’s ever-haunting challenge is to take his/her business to the next level. Considering so, one must take the operational budget into account before moving on.

The future is uncertain, so is the market. An economic crisis in the market or investing in a potential area of your business may force you to cut jobs, relocate, hire new manpower, buy new stuff or technology, etc. Things like these don’t happen with a set of virtual assistants.

With the help of VA, you don’t need re-budgeting for new recruitment or relocation of your office and employees, because, your VA(s) will simply keep on working for your business remotely no matter what change takes place at your end.

Profit or loss, success or failure, your VA support shall continue as long as you don’t nullify the contract.

4. Your Business Hours Count

It is observed at almost every corporate office that staffs spend mostly 3–4 hours on actual work out of 8 on average.

Rest hours evaporate in social media, chatting, coffee breaks, and fatigues. Whatever the reason behind this is, if anyone loses capital, it’s you.

A virtual assistant may do the remote works but every hour counts for them. A VA fights against all odds to submit work to the employer timely and completely to save that working relationship for a future work order.

A VA may even work for multiple employers at a time, yet he/she manages the time conveniently to serve the clients.

5. No Levies, No Perks

By hiring a virtual assistant you save yourself the levies like employee taxes except that you must submit relevant forms/papers regarding VA payments to tax authority annually.

You may find yourself paying your full-time employees a fixed salary followed by insurance, medical allowance, provident funds, and as such.

On top of those benefits, you are obligated to favor some sick leaves, casual leaves, holidays, etc.

These perks are absolutely absent in a working relationship between an employer and a virtual assistant. Since a VA works on his/her own convenient schedule, you can rest assured of getting your work done timely with minimum costs borne.

6. Ability to Spend More Family and Personal Time

Be it an entrepreneur, or an established business figure, a quality time spending with family members is rightfully asked for by one.

If you map out your daily works within your own working hours, you can leave the extra works for your virtual assistant.

This allows you to keep the stress out of your mind while being present at your family’s side in every type of need.

A comprehensive work-instruction for the types of works you employ to your VA can eliminate the irritating contacts between you and the VA when you’re off work.

Technological Influence over Virtual Assistance:

Technology is changing every day while changing along with it the various functions of a business. Gone are the days when a simple envelope containing an important business letter would take weeks to reach its destination. Today, typing it and clicking it away is a second matter.

This ever-changing technology is weaving business networks across the globe of which the smart entrepreneurs are getting benefitted. Technological advancement has both lessened as well as broadened the various scopes of work.

Thus technology has similarly facilitated as well as set requirements for virtual assistants in businesses.

Let’s take a short note of both these sides.

How Technology has Facilitated VA

• The invention of the Internet and Email
• Enabling Video & Audio Call
• Cloud File Sharing & Storing
• Product and Service Promotion Online
• Enabling Hard Copy Docs into Electronic Files
• VPO Remote Connection/ International Calling Interface

There’s no denying how the above tech interfaces have capacitated global business communication remotely in terms of official contacting, document sharing, file storing, meetings, interviews, etc.

An efficient VA can utilize partially or almost every interface of modern technology to aid in your business functions.

How Technology has Set Requirements for VA

1. Back office support: IT service, website maintenance, online banking representatives, etc.
2. Customer Feedback and Complaints Handling: Telecom customer service representatives, user experience enhancers, etc.
3. Business Expansion Worldwide: Setting offices and branches in different cities or franchises in countries while the operational functions increase.
4. Research, Content Writing and Data Entry: Researching information for clients, Data collection, inputting data & information in documents or databases by the Content Writer and Data Entry Clerk.

Consider These Downsides of a Virtual Assistant

The benefits of hiring a virtual assistant keep the downsides on heels. There are a few disadvantages of appointing a virtual assistant as follows:

• Your VA will most possibly work with multiple clients, which may come in the way of smooth work submission and timely responsiveness.
• Due to multitasking, your VA might not be occasionally available for an additional correction or a change in a document or sending/resending an email to your client.
• It will be hard to keep track of the work progress of your remote assistant since he/she will be working on a different time-zone.
• Training up a virtual assistant is an irksome task to do. Though it pays off in the end, you may require spending a few of your outside working-hours (or business hours) behind grooming them up.
• The loyalty and dedication of your VA are only substantial through their accomplished works; otherwise, these are just virtual dependency.
• Sometimes, your VA may not be available in times of need and you might find yourself with some unaccomplished workload. Other issues like religious, cultural, and social differences might not let a potential work relationship work out to the fullest.
• Your VA might be all-ears to you, yet distant location barrier may spawn other problems like telecommunication drops, down of the internet, data breaks, etc. which may certainly hamper the work productivity.
• A risk of data theft always remains in a virtual assistant function. Unless your VA is working on a highly protected virtual interface, your business documents, inside information, financial figures, etc. are under immense jeopardy.

Conclusion:

Every new business solution comes with pros and cons, and a virtual assistant solution is no different from this. The above discussion may be sufficient for you to scale whether a virtual assistant will prove a necessity or a burden in your business. There’s no harm trying out once if you can ensure your business information’s safety in the first place.

There’s also no denying that VA solution is emerging at a significant rate worldwide. Nearly 1.91 million freelancers in the UK are working more or less as virtual assistants.

Artificial Assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Alexa are well-established examples of the growing necessity of controlled and safe virtual assistance.

If you are wondering where to find a reliable VA, surf the virtual assistant websites like Virtualistant and Upwork. Besides, inquiring with your reliable business peers and associates may be viable in finding one.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.