Freelance News, Freelancing Skills, Freelancing Tips, Freelance Virtual Assistant,

Guide To Hiring Virtual Assistants

Freelance News Freelance Resources Freelance Skills Freelance Tips Freelancing Buzz Blog Posts

In his bestselling book The Four Hour Workweek, author Tim Ferriss talks extensively about how virtual assistants can be the low-cost help needed for small business owners to outsource menial, low-level tasks to focus on more productive activities. This year, with more businesses going increasingly digital and remote work becoming the norm, virtual assistants are becoming an untapped resource that have long been perceived to either be reserved for big firms like EY or too much of a hassle to deal with. Read Also: Building A Remote Team? 5 Factors To Determine If It Will (Or Will Not) Work For You Although the global economy is projected to expand by 4% in 2021 according to World Bank forecasts, a return to normalcy is likely to hinge on widespread COVID-19 vaccine rollouts to an otherwise tepid growth outlook. This means that many business owners are likely to look for more solutions to reduce the costs of operations while waiting for the economy to recover. It could be a good time to consider hiring virtual assistants to offload parts of the business that are usually menial and administrative in nature, and leave yourself and your core team with greater room to focus on value-producing tasks. What Tasks Can Virtual Assistants (VA) Help With? A virtual assistant (VA) typically provides services to companies and entrepreneurs over the internet. While they can work remotely, you may need to provide them with the right tools and data in order for them to do their jobs well. Most VAs will have several years’ experience earned in the “real” (non-virtual) business world, or several years’ experience working online or remotely. You can hire Virtual Assistants to outsource many types of work: Administrative tasks like data entry and email management Creative work such as low-level graphic design, video-editing, article writing and social media management Bookkeeping tasks such as expense tracking, invoicing, payroll and many more While these are some types of work you can outsource, you should also be mindful of outsourcing what is non-core to your business, as well as vetting for relevant background experience. When Should You Hire A Virtual Assistant ? Although books like The Four Hour Workweek actively promote the use of virtual assistants to “outsource your life”, i.e. book movie tickets, dinner reservations and other trivial matters, these self-help books should also be taken with a pinch of salt. After all, the authors bank on these sensationalistic facts to sell more books. As a business owner, it makes sense to hire a virtual assistant when you find yourself swamped with administrative tasks when you could better optimise your time for your business. Using the Eisenhower Matrix , you can see if you are spending your time effectively to maximise business efficiency. Urgent Not Urgent Important Quadrant I: Urgent and Important Do Quadrant II: Not Urgent but Important  Plan Not Important Quadrant III: Urgent but Not Important  Delegate Quadrant IV: Not Urgent, Not Important Eliminate It makes sense to hire a […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *