Working from home has become another ‘new normal’ of the 21st century. In fact, many employees now work from home and have started to experience what it’s like to have more control and power over the way that they can use their time and organize it around their daily tasks. However, having employees working from home is a different story from hiring virtual staff, and there are many benefits to the latter that isn’t applicable to the former. Let’s dive in.
- Professionals – both at their job and at working virtually.
As someone who has been a VA herself, I know the benefits to businesses first hand. I have experienced the relief and balance it can bring back to the business owner’s life through helping with various tasks, leaving them to get on with following up with leads and winning sales.
There are many benefits of hiring remote employees, especially in the growing digital business world. Virtual staff are highly skilled professionals who are capable of doing almost anything remotely; and this isn’t because they were forced into it, but because they have chosen to work fully online. Whether they offer services such as data entry and typing, transcribing meetings, translating documents from different languages, or a host of other tasks, these professionals know how to work remotely and can therefore do so much more productively– something that reduces your cost in the end as you can pay less per hour.
- Lowered costs.
Indeed, another benefit of hiring virtual assistants is that you don’t have to pay a fixed salary. The majority of VAs are paid hourly, their rate dependent on the work they do. They have their own equipment, they have their own insurance and they are only paid for the actual hours they are working on your business. Meaning you don’t pay for their coffee break.
- Forget the benefits
Another of the major benefits of hiring virtual staff is that the overhead associated with hiring them is minimal. Because there are no salaried employees, you eliminate the need to provide benefits; this is something they take care of independently,
- More time for more important things.
One of the biggest benefits of hiring virtual staff is that it allows you to focus your attention on running your business. You can leave the administrative side to someone else, allowing you to return to what you do best; or, you can hire experts to do tasks that those who are in your local area do not have the expertise or skills to execute. This also means that you don’t have to worry about having enough office space or worry about team meetings. As mentioned in the first point, they are experts at working virtually, so they know when they need to check in. The endpoint? No endless meetings and email chains; instead, more productivity.
The Challenge
Over the course of three days – just three little days set a timer on your watch or on your phone for every 20 minutes.
Each time the timer goes off, document what you did in that time.
At the end of the day, ask yourself these three questions and put a line through all of the items that answer them.
- What business tasks should I not have been doing?
- What business tasks did I hate doing?
- What business tasks can I not do competently?
What you are left with are only those roles that YOU should be doing, the rest? Well, the rest is keeping you back from growing your business, it’s keeping you back from doing the things you love to do in your spare time – and here’s the kicker. If you add up all the chargeable work you earned in that day and divide that figure by all the hours you actually worked that day (including the stuff you put a line through) to figure out how much you earned per hour that day.
When I did this exercise, I felt sick! My findings (I am very embarrassed to say) showed me I had earned less than minimum wage. I was so shocked and I changed things, quickly! Less than a year later my business has grown dramatically, with a monthly income nearly 10 times what my average month was before. Simply by asking myself those three questions.
Getting someone to do the ‘should not’, ‘hate’, and cannot items means you will actually have more time for following up on leads, getting the sales, and even having a life outside of work!
You owe it to yourself. Try it, I’d love to hear your findings.