For the past ten years, virtual assistants have proved to be a reliable asset to many businesses. From Fortune 500 businesses to sole proprietors, a virtual assistant is a cost-effective and flexible way to expand the company’s solutions for a wide range of fields. Virtual assistants can help everyone, from overworked workers to overscheduled business owners.
We have gathered some of the DO’s and DON’Ts to successfully work with a virtual assistant. These points are from business owners and some are from virtual assistants themselves. The list aims to help succeed in collaborating with a virtual assistant OR know hiring one might not be the right decision for you.
It may be strange and challenging to be working with someone from across the globe. One way to overcome this negative thinking is to think of the virtual assistant as a remote worker.
Before we get through the dos and don’ts, consider some of the advantages of working with a virtual assistant:
- Virtual assistants can work on a flexible setup: they can work on a project-by-project basis or per hour.
- You pay according to the time spent working (depending on how the agency handles billing)
- Hiring a virtual assistant means less time to spend chatting with a coworker, less time to spend with coffee and surfing the internet. It also means increased productivity.
- Help you manage your business effectively without breaking a bank.
- Access to skills you need to scale your business.
- A chance for you to live a work-life balance.
- Virtual assistants add diversity in your roast of team members.
- Lastly, it is environmentally sustainable.
However, there are several other considerations to remember when collaborating with a virtual assistant, such as:
- It is harder to make spontaneous or unplanned requests due to the limited working hours of your virtual assistant.
- Difference in time zones, but this aspect is often addressed during the interview.
Based on the advantages and few considerations to remember when dealing with a virtual assistant, on top of the points drawn from years of working both with business leaders and virtual assistants, here are some of the DO’s and DONT’s of working with virtual assistants.
DO’s:
- Make your virtual assistant feel they are part of your team, because your virtual assistant is a member of the team.
- Recognize that your virtual assistant plays a significant part of your business growth.
- Provide your virtual assistant a business email address especially if the job description requires your virtual assistant to communicate with your customers.
- Establish limits on the virtual assistant’s decision authority scope of work, work hours, and availability.
- Set the goals. Make it plain what you want from them and your friendship. If you want such projects to be completed within 24 hours, make sure they are mindful of this from the start.
- Inform them of deadlines and timelines.
- Lay the expectations down. These expectations should be for both of you.
- Know how many hours your virtual assistant works. If you require them to work longer, you have to talk with the virtual assistant.
- Establish the system so the virtual assistant can transition in your organization quickly and smoothly.
- Organize the tasks and the access that you will delegate to the virtual assistant.
- Reply to the virtual assistant’s questions and inquiries. Provide feedback.
- If you don’t understand why a task is accomplished in a certain manner, or why it took longer than anticipated, ask.
- Maintain an honest and open communication.
- Keep track of their progress.
- Be considerate of their time. It is not permissible to arrange meetings and then postpone them at the last minute.
- Virtual assistants value their clients but if you have urgent matters and your virtual assistant is not available, try to be understandable.
DONT’s:
- Be not ready. If you hire a virtual assistant and are not prepared for it You’ll spend a lot of time (and money) trying to find out what you want/need your VA to do when they’re on the clock, whether it’s a conference or not remembering what you want/need them to do.
- Be disinterested. Your virtual assistant often waits for your approval before proceeding to need tasks. Avoid being responsive so you will not waste both of your virtual assistant and your time.
- Be ambiguous. Ambiguous messages or instructions often lead to mistakes. We often assume we are being obvious, but we are not.
- Be unreachable. If your virtual assistant is reluctant to reach out or speak to you, there would be a lot of confusion and speculation on the part of the virtual assistant. This could say to your virtual assistant needing to prevent dealing with you.
- Micromanage. This is the opposite of being disinterested. Micromanaging shows how you distrust your virtual assistant.
- Be indecisive and unsure of where you will take your business. Change is good but if you are unsure where the direction of your business is going, you are wasting your and your virtual assistant’s opportunity, time, and energy.
Following the “DOs” and “DONT’s” positions you and your virtual assistant for a rewarding experience. Your virtual assistant will be able to adjust and hone their capabilities while you will have everything taken off your desk
We would love to hear if this tip worked for you! If you have questions on virtual assistants. For more information and inquiries, contact info@value-va.com. For more contents like this, connect with us on our Linked In and Facebook Page.
