Common Do’s and Don’ts of Working with Virtual Assistants

Virtual assistants have become a great asset to overworked, overscheduled business owners. Virtual workers help companies of all sizes and industries with a number of day-to-day tasks to free up time for in-office employees. Whether a business needs help with administrative duties, marketing, design, or development, they can find the right virtual worker to fill their needs. While virtual assistants have become more common, not everyone is well informed about how to best work with them. To help you out, we thought it would be useful to put together a brief article on this subject. If this is something that you’re interested in learning more about, here are common do’s and don’ts of working with virtual assistants.

Do’s

• Make them feel like they are an important part of your team. Make them feel like they are part of the team, not just working for you. Feeling detached can crush morale. Assign work evenly and fairly, so everyone feels involved and important. When assigning tasks, make sure you understand the importance of each assignment and get involved with your team.
• Set boundaries. For example, let them know when you are available, and when you are not.
• Set expectations. Specify what you expect from your VA and the relationship up front. If you need a 24-hour turnaround time, be clear when you’re interviewing them. Know their availability. If your VA is only available 2 days a week, ensure your schedule can accommodate their schedule as well.
• Have procedures available for them to follow to make the transition easier. You can do this by creating a step-by-step procedure or even something as simple as a log of actions and instructions you’ve completed.
• Prepare clear tasks and responsibilities ahead of time for your new trainees to handle. Don’t make it a guessing game on how they can help you. Set aside a period of time in the beginning to review their work, hours, and achievements to ensure their success in the future.

Don’ts

• Don’t be unprepared. Prepare your virtual assistant to handle any task you might ask of them, even if it’s a simple one. An unprepared assistant will waste a lot of time trying to figure out what the task is, and even more time trying to complete it.
• Don’t be vague. Most of the time, they are waiting on a response from you, so if you don’t give them one, they can’t move forward with the conversation.
• Don’t be unapproachable. If your assistant feels afraid to bother you or talk to you, there will be a lot of miscommunication and guesswork which will avoid you having to interact with your assistant.

Conclusion

We hope this article proves to be useful when it comes to helping you make the most out of your virtual assistants. It’s crucial that you follow these best practices to ensure efficiency for your day-to-day operations. Be sure to keep everything you’ve learned here in mind so that you can make the most informed decisions for your business.

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