The Upwardly Mobile

With the economy heading quickly towards recession, more companies than ever are considering hiring Virtual Administrative Assistants. A Virtual Administrative Assistant can provide the specialized support that both small business owners and top executives need. However, concerns and uncertainty about virtual assistants have kept many from taking the final leap. Here are five foolish fears about hiring a virtual administrative assistant and the reasons you shouldn’t worry:

1. Can a Virtual Administrative Assistant Get the Job Done?

One of the biggest fears surrounding hiring any virtual assistant involves the ability of in-office staff to communicate effectively with those out of the office. With today’s technology, however, this fear is entirely out-dated. Video Instant Messaging, Cell Phones, Conference calls and VOIP technologies like Skype make it easier than ever to communicate with off-site workers.

What really causes the most difficulty is a lack of process many companies encounter when hiring a virtual administrative assistant who works entirely remotely. When hiring a virtual administrative assistant, it’s important to create the same kind of structure you would otherwise have at a physical office. Have your virtual administrative assistant prepare and deliver your morning agenda in the same way every time, schedule a midday brief with her every day, and remember to follow up just like you would in your normal office environment. Remember: since most small successful business owners and top executives conduct the majority of business outside the office, face-to-face interaction between administrative assistants and their bosses is already minimal. It no longer matters where your administrative assistant works, and having a virtual administrative assistant is more viable than ever.

2. How Will I Know My Virtual Administrative Assistant is Actually Working?

If I’m not there to ensure my virtual administrative assistant is working, how will I know she actually is? This concern arises out of a misconception about what being a boss is actually about. Effective bosses don’t devote time to the kind of employee babysitting that monitors whether their assistants are actually working. Instead, they build feedback right into the work process. In a physical office setting, such feedback might take the shape of creating a set of concrete deliverables with deadlines. If you know you asked your assistant to get something done by a certain time, it’s pretty obvious whether she’s working when the due date rolls around.

Working with virtual administrative assistants isn’t much different. It’s important to create the same kinds of deliverables and deadlines that you would with an on-site administrative assistant, but with a virtual administrative assistant, you take the process one step further. Instead of merely agreeing on the time and manner in which a deliverable is due, agree with your virtual administrative assistant about how long something should take. If you both agree that a given task should take 3 hours, then you’ll know your virtual administrative assistant is working and that you’re being billed properly when you receive an invoice for your work.

3. Don’t Virtual Assistants Speak Poor English?

Virtual assistants, like any assistants, come in many shapes and sizes. Some virtual administrative assistants do speak less-than-stellar English, but it’s easy to find just as many who are native English speakers, or who learned English at a very young age and who speak quite clearly and use better vocabularies than most of their American or British counterparts. If this is a specific concern for you or your company, be sure to specify in the job listing that you create that fluency is especially important to you; follow through by conducting a phone or Skype interview and asking for a few examples of written work.

4. Isn’t Outsourcing Bad for the Economy?

One of the most prevalent fears surrounding virtual administrative assistants involves outsourcing. Many small business owners fear that, while outsourcing may be good for them individually, it’s bad for the economy and ultimately for the country in general. It’s important to remember, however, that outsourcing doesn’t inherently involve sending jobs overseas. Administrative Assistant jobs can be outsourced to workers living within the country just as easily as they can to foreign workers. Perhaps more importantly, if your business can continue to grow by hiring virtual administrative assistants, then outsourcing may allow you to increase revenue to the point where you can afford to hire more workers than before.

5. Can I Afford a Virtual Administrative Assistant?

Some virtual administrative assistants, especially those working from within the country, may charge more per hour than their in-office administrative assistant counterparts. It’s important, however, to look at overall value to determine the true costs of hiring any worker. Because using a virtual administrative assistant involves outsourcing to another business owner, companies can avoid about half the costs of normal employment. Benefits, employment taxes, office supplies, and a host of other costs make virtual administrative assistants much less costly, even when their hourly rate is higher. Almost all companies can afford virtual administrative assistants.