Choosing whether to outsource your admin support or hire in-house is multi-faceted decision that affects multiple areas of your business. Who you choose to hire can dramatically improve your/your team's productivity or it can be a costly waste of time and resources.
Here are the most impactful five reasons why virtual assistants are a more reliable, cost-effective solution than hiring in-house:
1) You Save Dozens of Hours by Not Having to Manage Your Assistant
As a managed service, we take full responsibility for training, coaching and providing on-going professional development opportunities for your virtual assistant. This includes:
- Pre-training all of our VAs so they have a strong foundation of knowledge
- Providing additional training on your unique processes, tools, and preferences
- Spot-checking the quality of your assistants work and making improvements as needed.
- Acting on any constructive feedback that you give
- Providing on-going training to ensure your VAs skills stay up-to-date
If you hire an assistant in-house, you or people on your team will have to spend dozens of hours getting them up-to-speed on your processes and preferences, plus additional time coaching them on how to fix mistakes.
2) Access to a Wealth of Collective Knowledge
When you hire an in-house assistant, their knowledge is limited to their own prior experiences and, if you need them to gain an understanding of new tools and processes, you have to help teach them. As a result, your typical entry to mid-level assistant will functional but, bring little new information to your team.
On the flip side, your virtual assistant is surrounded by a team whose collective knowledge is based on 500,000+ hours of service to high-powered professionals. This means that, in addition to bringing their own knowledge and skills to the table, they have instant access to people who are experienced with all of your current tools plus any that you want to adopt, who’ve mastered the projects you want to improve, and who have a wide array of professional skills that can pull your business forward.
Since all of our assistants work side-by-side in one of two offices, they regularly collaborate on the best ways to support their clients and teach each other new skills.
3) You Never Go a Business Day Without Service
Regardless of whether you hire a virtual assistant or go in-house, your assistant will inevitably take days off because they’re sick, coping with a personal tragedy or just want to go on vacation.
When you have an in-house assistant, you lose support while your employee is out of the office - forcing you to deal with delays or do the work yourself. This is a huge inconvenience, especially if it happens during a busy time.
In contrast, when your virtual assistant takes time off, nothing changes. We train a backup VA in all of your processes so, when our primary one is unavailable, you’ll still receive support.
Thus, with a virtual assistant, you’ll never go a business day without service.
Learn about other productivity-boosting benefits virtual assistants offer.
4) Lower Employment Costs
One of the biggest factors that people consider when hiring an assistant is, of course, cost. While one option is not definitively cheaper than the other, their price structures vary significantly. When going in-house, your employment costs are impacted by many factors including:
- Expected wages in your region
- The skill level of the candidates you’re seeking
- The benefits package your company offers
- Payroll tax rates
- Other factors dependent on the labor laws/market in your location
The cost of a virtual assistant is much more simple and stable. You pay a flat, monthly rate and we take care of paying your assistant’s salary, benefits, and bonuses.
5) Minimal Impact from Turnover
The average in-house assistant changes jobs every eight months. Employee turnover that is that high has a significant impact on your HR costs and how reliably you and your team get to access support.
After all, a two-week notice rarely gives you enough time to hire a replacement so, in addition to the effort and costs of finding a new person, you go weeks without support.
Our turnover at Prialto is considerably lower than that and, even when our employees do decide to move on, our clients experience minimal impact.
We heavily document your processes and, as soon as a VA gives us their two-week notice, we immediately begin training your replacement assistant and planning your transition. You have zero lapses in support and only a minimal slow-down while your new virtual assistant masters your processes.
If you want to learn if a virtual assistant is right for you, please contact us. We’d love to answer your questions and explore if Prialto is a good fit.