We’re living in unprecedented times. Unemployment has spiked, businesses are closing, and “social distancing” has entered the global lexicon. What’s next for businesses like yours? Unfortunately, only time can tell.
But we do know that there are some key issues that every businessperson across the world has to think about:
- Small business owners are going to be faced with tough decisions. Do you scale back your full-time workforce? Do you scale back their hours?
- Even in open businesses, social distancing is changing how we interact. How do you make up the time lost and keep the business running in a remote economy?
- How can you leverage low-cost investments to help ensure the business remains profitable while your employees are furloughed, working from home, or working reduced hours?
One potential answer: virtual assistants (VAs).
- If you know that your business can’t maintain its usual staffing, VAs can help you keep the business afloat while you work to buoy your company.
- No matter what your current policy is with full-time employees, one thing is clear: you can best serve them by making sure they have a business they can come back to.
Virtual assistants who help with marketing, administration, communication, sales, data, and research can help keep the business afloat, even if you’re not able to lean on full-time employees with your reduced revenue.
These will be tough times for employees who depend on your business. But if you can grow a more flexible workforce through the use of VAs, you might just be able to weather the storm. Here’s how.
How VAs Can Help Shoulder the Burden in Uncertain Times
There’s one thing about uncertainty: any prediction you make will probably be wrong. Adding a virtual assistant to your workforce offers a degree of flexibility that means you don’t have to be spot-on with your estimates of future business. If a VA can step in, you’ll be able to keep things moving even with many of your workers at home.
Here are a few of the tasks you can expect a VA to perform well, even in tough times:
- Marketing and outreach. Having a virtual assistant help maintain the supply lines of marketing, outreach, and sales could keep your business in the black.
- Bookkeeping. The Department of the Treasury extended the tax filing deadline from April to July in 2020. That highlights just one of the many bookkeeping issues that businesses have to deal with now.
- Administrative tasks. Managing a remote team, maintaining open lines of communication, and running a virtual office can all be done via virtual assistant.
- Coordinating schedules. If your team is working from home now, there’s no more water cooler for coordinating schedules. An experienced VA can step in and end the phone tag.
- Communication. Need someone to handle the phones while you’re having important, high-level meetings about the future of your business? Need someone to ensure that remote workers stay engaged throughout periods of social distancing? Adding a VA can help smooth out these processes.
- Data entry. This is one of the easiest tasks to outsource to a VA. If you need to free up your time to focus on planning how to handle this crisis, outsource data entry to a VA working remotely.
That isn’t to say that every virtual assistant experience will be 100% perfect. There are pros and cons to working with a VA that you’ll want to consider:
Pros
- Virtual assistants can help keep your business moving, even in the face of staff reductions.
- Using VAs means you can start/stop their contracts on a dime, giving you the flexibility to hire back full-time workers when you need to.
- Remote working means that VAs don’t have to be limited to your area.
- VAs are an affordable option when you factor in the hiring costs associated with full-time workers. According to Best of Budgets, a VA can even help save on over 70% in operating costs every year.
- Budget flexibility. If the average worker only performs up to three hours of work per day, you may be able to get as much done with less money.
Cons
- Onboarding. The threat is already here, and you’ll need a skilled, experienced VA if you want to expect them to take your tasks and perform them adequately.
- Demand. The demand for remote, temporary workers has spiked. Your business needs to be in a position to find a VA with availability.
How Delegated Can Help
Interested in hiring a VA to supplement your business, but worried about the bottom line in a difficult economy?
There’s no reason you should have to make any major changes or take on more risk than you need to. Even if you’re hiring a VA.
We feature two low-cost plans that help introduce you to a VA without major commitments. That includes:
- Personal 12 (only 12 VA hours per month)
- Family 24 (24 hours per month)
More ambitious business plans are just as flexible, and you can always ramp up your VA hours depending on your needs. For more details, visit our Pricing Page.
VAs don’t have to replace your loyal full-time employees. But they can help make sure that when the time comes, those employees have a thriving business to return to.
