Your business is growing and flourishing. But you’re finding it impossible to focus on what matters most in your company because you’re bogged down with unnecessary admin. It sounds like it’s time to hire a Virtual Assitant. An assistant is someone who can help you with business admin from bookkeeping to filing and personal admin like arranging flights and travel accommodation for your next holiday.

The only decision left to make is whether to hire a local PA or a virtual PA, also known as a virtual assistant. Let’s weigh up your options.

It saves money

Perhaps the most important reason to hire a virtual PA is that it saves your business money. 

Cut recruitment costs

Hiring an in-house or local PA will mean spending time and money on recruitment, screening CVs, and tedious interviews. The great part about hiring a virtual PA is that all the vetting and HR is done for you by the agency you hire through. Your remote PA will have already been put through rigorous interviewing processes and have all their references checked, so you don’t have to. All you need to do is choose from a pre-selected list of candidates. This saves you the expenses, both time and money, involved in hiring a recruitment company to find the right match for you.

Overheads for in-house

Hiring a local PA, someone who physically sits in your office involves:

• Paying a competitive salary and benefits.
• Paying for sick leave and time off.
• Taxes. 

Hiring a virtual assistant means paying a fixed fee, usually much lower than a salary. You’ll also save money on purchasing resources like laptops and desks, and your virtual PA will have their own reliable equipment.

You’ll get your money’s worth

You may think that you’ll need to keep your virtual PA as busy as possible to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. This isn’t typically true. Most virtual assistant agencies charge you an hourly rate. This means you’ll only pay for the work your virtual assistant does and nothing more. However, if you were to hire an in-house PA, you’ll be paying them even if they sit idly at their desk for hours.

It gives you more choice

When you hire an in-house assistant, you’re restricted to local candidates. And, depending on where you are based, your choices for a highly skilled assistant could be quite limited. 

A wider pool

When you hire a virtual assistant, you’re automatically gaining access to a wider pool of candidates from all over the world. 

Having more quality candidates to choose from instantly goes a long way when hiring someone you can trust to assist in running your company.

The perfect match

Hiring online also means you’ll get access to virtual assistants whose skills match your industry or the specific tasks you’ll need them to carry out. For example, if one of the things you’ll need your virtual PA to handle is content creation for your social media platforms, you’ll be matched with someone who has knowledge and experience in social media. It may be harder to find the exact talent and background you’re looking for if you’re hiring locally.

It promotes collaboration

You may think that the best way to work collaboratively is in person. However, our opinion is that the open lines of communication that are required to work remotely get more work done, which naturally encourages a more productive working relationship. Less time chatting around the water cooler and more time spent on getting things done.

Hiring a local PA may make you think that collaborating on projects or even doing training would be more effective. But working with a virtual PA is really just as easy. You can use digital conferencing applications like Zoom or Microsoft teams to meet for calls and make use of the screen-sharing function or even Google Suite products to collaborate on the same document. Having someone in the same office as you is no longer necessary in order to work effectively. 

 It gives you access to expertise

Some virtual assistants are supported by a team of specialists provided by the agency you work through. If there is something you need to do that your virtual PA can’t handle themselves, they will have experts on hand to help.

One thing that is unique to hiring a virtual assistant that you won’t get when hiring a local PA is the range of skills available to you. Working with the virtual assistant means you won’t have to go and hire someone else when your local PA doesn’t have the skills or experience to do something you require. A virtual PA has a pool of other assistants who can help in completing your tasks.

It’s flexible

Hiring a local PA will mean that they will most likely work fixed hours. If that makes sense to your business, then an in-house assistant may be the best match for you. But if it isn’t a requirement, hiring a remote PA means hiring someone who is highly flexible. The level of flexibility involved with remote assistants means you’re only paying for time worked whenever that work is done.

It’s scalable

As your business grows and evolves, the virtual agency you choose can scale with you. If you now have more work than one person can handle, additional assistants can be provided to you, usually at the same rate. If you have to cut back on expenses for whatever reason, you can downgrade to fewer hours for your virtual PA.

Partnering with a virtual agency like Outsourcery means you don’t need to go out and find someone to hire. You can save time sifting through CVs and holding interviews, and you can save big money on the overheads associated with in-house personnel. You’ll also have access to a pool of talent like no other, backed by experts. It’s time to consider that hiring locally may no longer cut it for your thriving business.