5 Tips on Successfully Hiring a Virtual Assistant to Ease Your Workload
A VA can take a huge weight off of your shoulders and help you with those tasks that bog you down when you should be focussing on other areas of your business. However, hiring a VA is not quite the same as hiring an employee and there are different considerations to make when taking this route. It can be a huge advantage to hire someone for only the hours and skills you need, without the commitment in terms of budget and hours that you might have to consider with an employee.
Here are some pointers on how to start a successful VA relationship and avoid some common pitfalls.
1. Ensure you are ready to handover to a VA
A common mistake when hiring a VA is not being ready to pass on your work. The best tasks to hand over are the repetitive ones. This means you don’t have to train your VA on lots of new types of work and you will be free to concentrate on other things. Using a tool like Asana, I can see which tasks come up regularly and then easily assign them to my new VA once the workload looks like a viable amount. By reviewing those tasks before hiring, I can also see what skills and talents my new VA needs.
2. Create a repeatable process
Giving a successful handover often relies on your processes and systems being thoroughly nailed down before you start. I don’t give any work to a new VA until I have a tried and tested method to share with them. Creating a training document or video for the tasks you want to outsource is a great way to make the handover less painful. It also means that should your team grow, any new team members will be able to pick up (and run with) that same task with minimal interference and input from you or anyone else.
3. Hire as carefully as you would an employee
Introducing a new person to your business data and contacts is a sensitive process. Whether you are sharing your Social Media logins or your company books, ensuring you have a reliable and trustworthy VA is of paramount importance. Check references as carefully as you would with an internal employee and consider a short Non-Disclosure Agreement for anyone handling confidential material.
4. Agree on timescales
When working with remote VAs, you may have multiple people working across different time-zones. This can have an impact on turnaround times. It can also be an advantage if you need round-the-clock-cover, as a VA on the other side of the globe can work while you sleep.
Something else to bear in mind is that you are a client, not an employer. You are probably not the only person who the VA works with. Treat the relationship as a partnership and consider a Service Level Agreement to help keep your workflow on schedule and easy to manage. Setting expectations early will help avoid any frustrations for both parties.
5. Agree the payment structure
There are many different types of VA solutions available, from individual sole traders to large Virtual Assistant businesses with multiple employees. Each business has its own payment structure and pricing. Hourly pricing might appear to be the simplest option, but you might get better value from a retainer or package based model (in which a set number of hours are sold in bulk).
Aside from payment models themselves, make sure you understand the payment terms and how you will be invoiced, especially with the smaller or solo operations.
If you’ve not yet considered hiring a Virtual Assistant, read more about why working with a VA can benefit your business, save you time, money and help you to accomplish more.
