How to Fully Utilize Your Virtual Assistant
If you’re starting to build a team or you need a little help with the work that’s piling on, hiring a virtual assistant can be the thing that boosts your productivity. Virtual assistants can take on any range of tasks, anything from completing client work, managing admin duties, or handling your bookkeeping.
When you hire a virtual assistant, you’re making a valuable addition to your busy team and investing in your business. If you’re ready to improve your business’s productivity and creativity, here’s what to expect from a virtual assistant and how to fully utilize their services!
Utilize Their Strengths
Before you hire a virtual assistant, go through your business and determine what you need help with and the appropriate tasks you can delegate to an assistant. When you’ve narrowed that down, find a virtual assistant who advertises the services you need. Hiring an assistant who excels in completing tasks they know how to do (and like) is a good indicator of the quality of work they’ll deliver.
Continue to find out what your virtual assistant enjoys doing and what they’re good at while working with them. Try to assign them work that aligns with their preferences and strengths. Giving your virtual assistant tasks they like to do will make them feel more motivated to get them done, resulting in better outcomes for them and your business.
Provide Professional Development Opportunities
If you have access to professional development resources, provide your virtual assistant with the opportunity to learn. Online courses, virtual conferences, and summits are a few things you can offer. It’s up to you whether or not you want these development opportunities to be paid, but compensation might encourage your virtual assistant to take up your offers.
Promoting learning within your business is one of the best ways to develop your workforce and improve the quality of your results. When you encourage your virtual assistant to develop their skills with your resources and guidance, they’ll apply what they learned to your business. Cultivating a growth mindset encourages everyone to implement their knowledge into improving their work, ultimately benefiting your business.
Get Them Comfortable With Your Systems
When you have the right systems in place, your team will be much more productive. While onboarding your virtual assistant, make sure they know how to navigate and use your systems to their advantage. Inform them of your communication preferences and when they can reach you. When they understand how everything works, they can deliver high-quality work much faster.
Get your virtual assistant comfortable with your systems by allowing space for questions, giving them time to explore your platforms and apps, and explaining how you want things done. SOPs are also a great resource for virtual assistants to have. They can always be found in the same place and have detailed instructions for completing every task in your business. Use these five tips to write the best SOPs for your team!
Encourage Time Off
Everyone needs time off to reset and come back refreshed! When you hire a virtual assistant, allow them to take breaks. They will be happy to help you redistribute work or plan tasks before they take time off.
Stepping away from work every once in a while is crucial for avoiding burnout and keeping the momentum up for your business. To ensure your workforce remains motivated, let your team utilize time off and actively encourage them to use it. Your virtual assistant will have a clear mind and be excited to get back to work when they return.
Offer Opportunities to Grow Within Your Business
Check in every once in a while and see if your virtual assistant is interested or capable of taking on more tasks for you. If your virtual assistant mentions they’re interested in learning, offer them opportunities to learn and grow. Provide them the flexibility to try new tasks, learn from others, and offer ideas for improvement to keep them engaged and happy.
It’s better to grow with one person than to consistently hire new ones. Hiring, onboarding, assigning tasks, and getting used to working with a new virtual assistant takes more time and effort than it is to retain one who is willing to learn and expand their skill set.
Hiring a virtual assistant is an investment in your business that helps manage your heavy workload. When you know what to expect from your virtual assistant, you can build a lasting relationship with someone who wants to help your business long-term.
Want to improve your business’s productivity and growth potential? You can do this through my Done-for-You Systems Setup service! As an expert in systems management, I’ll help reduce your stress and construct a plan to scale your business. Fill out the contact form today to get started!
About Solution Integrators
To keep it simple, I’m Ashley, a Chief Systems Officer. I take your complex problems and find ways to simplify them. My goal isn’t just to save you time (saving you time is the easy part!) – I want to fully level up the way you interact, manage, and fulfill offers for your clients. I want to help you provide a cohesive experience. An experience that not only feels like quality but looks that way too. From onboarding to offboarding – I want to transform each phase of interaction from lead to signed client. Let’s work together!
