Whether you’re the founder of a rapidly growing startup, an executive at a well-established firm, a first-time small business owner, or a professional service provider, hiring a virtual assistant to delegate business tasks to is a cost-effective way to boost your success.
To help you decide if it’s the right solution for you, this article will dive into the top 11 benefits of hiring a virtual assistant.
1) Focus on the Activities that Drive Your Success
The ServiceNow State of Work Report found that, on average, executives spend an average of 16 hours per week on administrative tasks and other work that doesn’t require their authority or expertise. This is a huge loss of productivity that slows down your progress on key projects.
The number one benefit of hiring a virtual assistant is that it enables you to focus on the activities that drive your success.
Offloading all of your time-consuming and tedious administrative tasks frees up tons of time for you to improve your strategic projects and build key relationships.
Virtual assistants can handle your repetitive tasks like:
- Scheduling meetings and calendar management
- Data entry
- Taking phone calls
- Travel planning
- Managing social media accounts
- Internet research
Read More: Do you need a virtual assistant?
2) Reduce Hiring and Employee Costs
Though the average salary of virtual assistants is similar to entry-level in-house employees, you incur no hiring or incentives costs which saves your company thousands of dollars.
A study from the Society for Human Resource Management found that it costs an average of $4,129 to fill job positions. This cost includes:
- Time spent creating job listings
- Fees to post on job boards
- Ads to attract candidates
- Time spent reviewing resumes and interviewing
- Background check fees
- Miscellaneous employee-related expenses specific to individual company’s hiring processes
Additionally, companies spend thousands more dollars per employee on training, employee benefits, medical insurance, and perks. Hiring virtual assistants lets you escape all of those costs and pay fixed monthly salaries for the labor you’re getting.
Plus since your virtual assistants work remotely, you don't have to worry about any of the operating costs of having them work out of a physical office such as an office space, furniture, or a computer system.
These are just a few of the ways you'll save money over hiring full-time employees.
Read More: How Much Does a Virtual Assistant Cost?
3) Gain Access to a Huge Pool of Knowledge
One of the benefits you can only get when you hire virtual assistants through a managed virtual assistant service like Prialto as opposed to an independent contractor is that you have access to a vast pool of knowledge that helps drive your ROI.
For example, we support clients in industries ranging from trucking to fintech to real estate which has given us knowledge of a wide variety of tools and processes.
If your virtual assistant doesn’t know how to do something that you ask them, they can reach out to their colleagues and get training internally.
You can also leverage the services collective knowledge to drive initiatives including:
- Setting up a new CRM and training your virtual assistants to keep it updated
- Streamlining your task admin work and task management
- Improving your sales pipeline management
- Creating processes so your virtual assistant can take on more complex projects
- Designing data entry workflows
To access these benefits, all you have to do is let your Engagement Manager know what you want to achieve and they’ll drive the implementation.
4) Scale Your Support Up and Down with Your Business Needs
If your business needs ebb and flow throughout the year, hiring a virtual assistant is the most cost-effective solution since it’s easy to scale up and down as needed.
During your busy season, you can quickly double or even triple the number of hours of virtual assistant support you receive. Once your business slows down, you can lower your costs by reducing the amount of support you pay for.
5) Never Go a Business Day Without Support
When your in-house assistant is out of the office, you must cover their workload until they return. Not only is the sudden lack of support stressful, but it can also severely impact your productivity and work-life balance.
This is why one of the biggest benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for a managed provider is that you get backup support.
From the day you onboard, a backup virtual assistant is trained alongside your primary VA so that, whenever they’re sick or on vacation, you still receive the same quality of support.
6) Achieve Greater Work-Life Balance
Delegating admin tasks to the right virtual assistant gives you more time to engage with the activities and people you love.
In addition to adding more time to your days, your virtual assistant can help you achieve a healthy work-life balance by creating space in your schedule for personal priorities.
Here are some of the ways our members use their VAs to balance their calendars:
- Reserving 45 minutes for lunch
- Ensuring their last meeting of the day ends in time for them to have dinner with their family
- Booking workout appointments
- Taking over their social media management so they spend less time on social media
Just let your virtual assistant know what your priorities are and they’ll accommodate them in your schedule.
Virtual assistants work hard to take on your admin tasks so you can focus more on what you want, such as your physical and mental health, business growth, or optimizing your free time in your personal life.
Read More: Work-Life Balance Makes You More Productive. Here's Why
7) Save Time by Letting Someone Else Coach Your VA
One of the main reasons we hear that busy executives and business owners don’t leverage administrative support is that they don’t have time to manage an assistant.
With a managed service approach, you don’t have to. For example, at Prialto we assign all our clients an Engagement Manager who drives your processes and mentors your VA.
Any time you want your virtual assistant to improve something or you want to offload a new project, just let them know and they’ll ensure your feedback is acted upon.
All of our virtual assistants also have Team Captains who monitor the quality of their work and give them feedback on how to continuously improve.
8) Experience Minimal Impact From Turnover
Good virtual assistants are instrumental to your productivity. When an in-house assistant moves on, it can take a few months to find a good replacement and get them up to speed. That gap in support is highly disruptive to your productivity.
An often overlooked benefit of hiring a virtual assistant is that you experience turnover less frequently and, when it happens, your Engagement Manager ensures that you have a smooth transition.
Here at Prialto, we have a strong company culture and incentive programs that ensure we have low turnover.
However, our VAs will occasionally move on so, we have processes to minimize the impact on our clients and ensure they never go a business day without service.
9) Boost Your Brand Image Online
Virtual assistants can play a crucial role in enhancing your brand image and online presence, attracting more customers, and increasing how your business is viewed online.
Social media marketing and management help
A virtual assistant can manage your social media profiles, engage with your audience, share relevant content in your industry, and monitor online conversations about your brand on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social channels.
Reputation management
Virtual assistants can track online reviews and feedback on 3rd party sites such as Google Reviews or G2, respond to customer concerns or bubble them up to you, and help maintain a positive brand image.
Content creation help
By assisting you to produce high-quality content such as blog posts, email marketing newsletters, or infographics, virtual assistants can help improve your website's SEO ranking, drive more traffic to your online channels, and increase your lead generation goals.
While they probably won't excel at writing your content for you, your virtual assistant saves you time on all of the other tasks needed such as formatting, editing, posting, and scheduling it.
10) Streamline Your Decision-Making Processes
Hiring a virtual assistant can contribute to more efficient decision-making within your organization by gathering data, conducting research, and providing valuable insights.
Market research
Virtual assistants can conduct market research to help you better understand your target audience, competitors, and industry trends, enabling you to make informed decisions about your business strategies.
Data analysis
By collecting and analyzing data from various sources, your assistant can help you identify patterns, trends, and opportunities that can inform your decision-making process.
Reporting and documentation
Virtual assistants can create detailed reports and documents, consolidating essential information to support decision-making and keeping your team informed and aligned.
11) Improve Employee Satisfaction and Performance
Research has found that American workers spend approximately 38% of their time on admin work that doesn’t require their status or expertise. This has a huge negative impact on their business productivity and, in many cases, job satisfaction since high-performers resent working on tedious tasks.
Virtual assistant support is an effective way to boost your high performers’ performance and satisfaction by enabling them to spend nearly all of their time on the projects that drive their success in their core business areas.
We support many sales, recruitment, marketing, and operations teams who have seen significant productivity and morale improvements since hiring virtual assistants to tackle their tedious tasks.
Related Reading: 9 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Virtual Assistant
The Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant are Clear
Hiring a VA offers a multitude of benefits that can significantly impact your business's success and growth.
From cost savings and increased efficiency to offloading your mundane administrative activities and access to specialized skills, most virtual assistants have the potential to revolutionize the way you manage your daily business operations.
As the business landscape continues to evolve, embracing the power of virtual assistance can help you stay ahead of the curve, adapt to changing circumstances, and maintain a competitive edge.
From small business owners to executive teams at Fortune 500 companies, virtual assistants offer benefits for individuals and teams alike that push businesses forward.
If you're looking to streamline your processes, improve productivity, and expand your business capabilities, consider partnering with a Prialto managed virtual assistant and experience the advantages firsthand.
Learn more about what it's like to work with a Prialto virtual assistants. Contact us to schedule a call.