What is a
Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant (VA) is an independent contractor or freelancer who works on behalf of entrepreneurs or companies. They assist from a remote location, usually such as a home office.
VAs typically have a number of years of experience working within administrative or business support roles. They are a flexible workforce that can provide as many, or as few hours as you require.
There are over 90 administrative services that a VA can support you with, from general admin to more specialised areas such as accounting or social media management. VAs tend to focus on a few tasks that they are most experienced in, and that they enjoy doing. An advantage of this for the employer is that they can choose to hire a VA just for the services they need, knowing that it the VA is doing something that they are skilled at.
Top reasons to hire a virtual assistant for your business
Maximise your productivity
Having a VA to manage your day-to-day tasks will free up more of your time to be able to work on things that make a bigger difference to your business.
Cost-effective solution
Hiring full-time employees can be expensive. As well as salary payments, you also need to contribute to NI, pensions, workplace consumables etc.
One of the benefits of hiring a VA instead is that you choose to pay on an ad-hoc basis or a monthly package, rather than an annual salary. You can pick and choose how many hours of support you need.
Flexibility for your business
When you are trying to grow a business there is often a challenge of trying to balance profitability vs headcount. VA’s provide a flexible solution to fulfilling your administrative requirements without the long-term commitment of hiring a permanent member of staff.
There are also other benefits to hiring a VA as you won’t need to pay for things like recruitment costs, PAYE, or Holidays or Sickness leave.
Quickly scale your business operations
Business growth is not linear. Using a VA allows you to more effectively manage the peaks and troughs more effectively – so if you know you’ve got an increase of work coming your way you can book a VA to help you manage the workload.
Only pay for productive time
In a normal office environment, there is often some time wasted when employees are interrupted by colleagues or they are chatting by the coffee machine.
By hiring a VA, you only pay for productive time. If a VA takes 45 minutes to perform a task then you only pay for 45 minutes of work.
Gain access to the best talent
Many of the best administrators and PAs have made the switch from traditional office based jobs to becoming a Virtual Assistant as it allows them greater flexibility and an increased work-life balance. This means that for a hiring manager there is a rich talent pool that can be accessed.
Access different skillsets
Virtual Assistants often focus on niche skill areas of what they are experienced at, what they are good at, and what they enjoy doing. If you are looking to hire a VA then you can choose which kind of support you need, knowing that the VA is skilled in that area and you can spend less time training them.
Easy to hire a replacement
If your usual virtual assistant needs to take some time off then finding a new VA to cover in the absence is a relatively easy. The VA may even offer up some suggestions of other people they know in their VA network that could help out too.
Offer 24/7 customer service
If your customer base is spread across the globe then you could consider hiring VAs from different countries to keep on top managing your inbox, phone lines or social media accounts.
Supporting your business growth
The role of the VA is designed to support you. VAs provide flexibility and agility to be used when you need them, which makes them a fantastic resource to support your business growth.
Free up your time and gain peace of mind
Avoid getting bogged down in the admin – leave it to your virtual assistant. By allowing your VA to perform your non-core tasks you can give yourself the time and space to do whatever you like! Whether that means time for some strategic thinking, or just to take some time out for you and your wellbeing.