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The emergence of virtual assistants during the new normal

The Virtual Assistant Staffing Agency was first started by Christine Durst in 1995. The term “Virtual Assistance” is believed to be first used by Anastasia Stacy Brice and life coach, Thomas Lenard, around 1996. It became the pop word around that time when she was working for overseas clients as a Virtual Personal Assistant arranging travel plans, managing admin work, etc.

December 2019, when people were busy making new year’s resolutions, we never thought how the following year was going to shake us to the core!

In March 2020, there was a nationwide lockdown and slowly the whole world was under the sudden impact of the lockdown. Novel coronavirus became a threat to the globe.

Everything stalled and moved fast simultaneously, a rise in widespread infection which unfortunately led to millions of deaths, layoffs amidst the virus spread, transition from work from office to work from home, emergency shutdown of companies, bankruptcy, debts, no human touch, no contact. It felt like the end back then.

But there were few who turned that threat into an opportunity. Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, was on a hiring spree when the recruitment process was freezing elsewhere.

There were so many issues that we had to deal with. Today, here we are going to talk about the work from office to home transition for virtual assistants. The process has been relatively smooth for the virtual assistants and the Virtual Assistant Staffing Agency as they already have the experience to work from offshore.

Here are few of the reasons for the rise of Virtual Assistants and Virtual Assistants Staffing agencies during the new normal.

1. Delegate everyday tasks: Virtual assistants are known for providing a chain of services seamlessly, like say, administration and operational tasks. Be it booking flight tickets, and hotels, be it managing calls, emails, or calendars, or be it scheduling meetings, appointments, and interviews, or online researching for your business – they do it all well.

When the pandemic struck, many businesses were impacted majorly the seed-level ones and medium-sized enterprises as well. While the business owners and executives were busy making decisions and planning ways to generate revenue and keep their business afloat – the VAs were hired for handling the administration and operations of the firms.

2. Cost cutdown/ hourly basis: Hiring a VA independently or from any VA staffing agency is beneficial for your business any day, with or without the pandemic. For starters, you don’t have to take care of their remuneration, onboarding if you hire from the latter. VAs are usually trained or need minimal training. We know that training takes up a lot of time and money. And during pandemic when cash flow was one of the major issues, then hiring VAs were the best decisions. Moreover, you don’t need to hire a VA for full time role, you can hire them on hourly basis, get your work done and also save up a lot of finance!

3. Pool of talents: India and Philippines are known to be the best of few where skilled virtual assistant staffs are present. The virtual assistant pool is unending and vast. The plus point from hiring a VA from VA Staffing agency is that you get a big pool of talent in the same place otherwise, there are many other sites like Upwork and Fiverr where you can find independent VA who have their own quotes for their respective services they can provide.

During pandemic, VA became very popular for their experience working for international clients and having the actual market knowledge. You will always find your next best hire in this vast market.

4. Experience of working without physical supervision: The primary reason why VA had a smooth to no transition during pandemic is because they have always got their work done without any physical supervision from their client. Their efficiency were never questioned even during the “new normal” time. They are also known to have mastered work-life balance.

What Accoance can provide you ?

A pool of talent where you can sift through people according to your requirements.
Swift onboarding and payrolling system of the VAs from our end. Hence, clearing more of your time.
Trained and quick-learner professionals as they have experience working with diverse industries.

So, what are you waiting for click here and book your first free consultation call with us!

Should budding entrepreneur hire virtual assistants?

Oftentimes, we get to hear this from aspiring entrepreneurs that they want to parent their ideas into this competitive world and bloom them into something spectacular!

We are also sure that you might have heard this from the majority of them stating that they want to be their own boss – delegating tasks to others and they will be doing the rule-making and decision-making on the ground.

Oh! Such a wishful thinking!

But is it truly the case? Are things so easy for an aspiring entrepreneur? Don’t they face any shortcomings? We all know how easy it is to say and how difficult it is to actually do what one has said. There have been cases where a certain entrepreneur has a great idea but lacks in resources such as time, finance and team. Building a business from scratch is always a little too much on the plate. You have to take care of so many things simultaneously – your business idea, sales, marketing, clients, finances etc. and you are just swamped with tasks round the clock.

Let’s check out the challenges that are commonly faced by budding entrepreneurs:

a. Cash Flow management: To build a business, cash is the first and foremost thing after you get your business idea. It is important to know how cash works! As you need cash for the smallest of the things. You will need to buy your office setup, equipment’s, software’s, hardware’s, pay the electricity bills, internet bills, pay your team and having a loan is just a cherry on the top!

Cash is always going to be tight for you. You need to have the sense to expend it judicially. Another scenario can be you are serving your client and the payment window is for a month. So, you wait for a month and if there is a delay in the payment process – you are done!

b. Hiring talents: Now building a team is another key challenge. We think the interview process is dreadful for the candidates alone, but here is a secret – ask a budding entrepreneur about the hiring process? S/he will not be able to word it out enough how much they are panicking over it. One of the hurdles in the hiring process is to know who you want and for what role so, it is necessary to draft every little detail about the job and the employee, like say, will there be full time employment or contractor required, what will be the working time, the qualifications needed etc. The next would be where to find the suitable fit, should you contact an agency(s) ( which is going to cost you extra) or ask for referrals who can be vouched for. Now, you know, how time consuming the whole process is.

Also, one wrong judgement can take you a few steps behind and slow down your whole business process. Your work would be affected and also, you have to find a new fit again.

c. Business Growth: Being an entrepreneur is going to be stressful most of the time! Especially when you are a fresher with immense pressure and lack of experience. There will be times when you have too much on your plate and you cannot deliver more and thus, you are losing time and the growth. It is important at that time, you start delegating tasks to your team and you step up into the management position where you are into decision and rule – making, in short, taking the ownership. One suffers from mental fatigue as you will have to enforce some harsh rules for your employees and make some tough decisions when it comes to competitive markets and clients.

We understand being an entrepreneur can be difficult to manage and can be messy. We here at Accoance can provide you with a chain of services that would be beneficial for you and your business revenue. We take charge of the best pool of talents, onboarding & payroll, and training them as well.

How are you benefitted when you hire from Accoance?

We are an outsourcing service provider company who provides you with a talented pool of virtual assistants. We will take you on a tour now for why virtual assistants,

You get a bunch of talented pool of candidates and you can sift through them accordingly once the vetting process is completed successfully. With this, you can hire the talents according to your needs, like say, full time, part time or as a contractor. Also, you can customize the package as you desire.
They are quick learners and flexible. Virtual assistants are usually quick learners as they have worked with different sorts of enterprises and they understand the needs and requirements of clients in a jiffy. They are also very flexible when it comes to training themselves or handling their workload. Also, they will always surprise you with skills they have!
You get 3 employees in one virtual assistant! S/he will be your PA – answering the calls and emails, managing your calendar and diary, scheduling meetings with clients etc. in the morning, handling your social media accounts, hiring talents or generating leads for your clients, in the noon and virtual accountant at the night. What more you could ask for, right!
You save a lot of money and time! You don’t pay for their workspace, their training, or at least design their compensation and rewards scheme.

So, what are you waiting for click here and book your first free consultation call with us

How are Virtual Assistants different from conventional employee

Are you a seasoned entrepreneur? Or have stepped into your business as a side hustle? Or juggling both a full time role and a small business? Or a business owner?

Whatever may be the case, staffing is one of the essentials in your list!

Also, are you cautious about the whole hiring procedure? You don’t really want to spend too much time and money on the interviewing process and/or in training the employees. Now, you have two options for hiring – it can be a conventional employee or a virtual assistant. Not really sure, which one is the right fit for your business now? Let us help you with it and make your life easier. Before we jump into the debate of who’s the best, check out where we wrote in detail about the benefits of virtual assistance .

Now to brief you about a conventional employee and a virtual assistant:

Who is a conventional employee?

A conventional employee aka traditional or regular employee, is the one who is hired as a full time employee to perform a specific job role for your company and they work in your office premises under your supervision.

Who is a virtual assistant?

A virtual assistant aka a remote worker or a contractor, is the one who works for your company on hourly basis and is located anywhere in the globe; he/she will be working from their own office space and will not be under your supervision.

How are VA different from conventional employees?

Cost: Virtual assistants are always cheaper than your conventional employees. For a virtual assistant, you will never have to pay for insurance or any other benefits such as sick leaves, paid holidays, etc. You only pay for the hours they work for you.

While for a conventional employee, you will have to design a proper total rewards and compensation scheme along with recognition and other benefits such as paid holidays, casual leaves, sick leaves, health insurance, pension etc.

With virtual assistants you always get more, reason being, either they are independent contractors or they work for a virtual assistant staffing agency. For the former role, they have to be highly skilled and trained to sell themselves in the market and in the case of the latter, they usually get trained by the agency and are skilled according to the job roles and requirements.

Many surveys and research shows training and development is highly expensive and a time taking process. Hiring a conventional employee is always going to cost you more! With advancing technology and the market, it is important for one to regularly upskill. So, when you hire one, you also have to bear the expenses of his/ her learning and development.

Adaptability to workload: Virtual assistants can be a seasonal hire, but not conventional employees. If your business is a seasonal run or gets busier during seasons then, hiring a virtual assistant is a better fit. In less amount of time they can adapt to workflow, also most of the time, you don’t need to train them.

But when it comes to a conventional employee, he/she gets stuck around the cold market period or is specific to one job role (upskilling is an option, but it has its own expenses and time consumption!).

Space: Virtual assistants have their own space unlike conventional employees. Virtual assistants are remote employees, who either work from their home offices or work from their offshore workplace, they have their own laptops, desktops, also have or are provided with stable internet connection respectively. For a conventional employee, you need to rent or buy a place, get them laptops, desktops, and stable internet connectivity. Not only these but you have overhead expenses also (furniture, water cooler, vending machine, cabling and wiring!).

Working hours: You need an employee for a task of only two hours weekly! Fair enough!

Virtual assistants work on an hourly basis, meaning, they only charge you for particular tasks or projects, not for their tea breaks and lunch breaks! This also implies you can customize their time according to your requirement and workload; delegating them their work. Sometimes, it happens that you need assistance at a certain time and you want your employee to be there, it certainly can happen outside the framed office hours, so, in this situation it is always better to hire a virtual assistant, who can adjust accordingly to you (a reasonable and mutual decision between both the parties). Whereas, conventional employees are full time employees with fixed in-office working hours, they are usually not obligated to help you with your tasks after the said time.

Options: You never run out of options with virtual assistants but with conventional employees! Geographical location acts as a limitation most of the time. You have to compromise with the skill sets while searching for a full time employee. But if you look out for a virtual assistant then you will never run out of options – there is a whole globe filled with talents that you are seeking for!

So folks! Now you know who is better for you and why!

Virtual Assistants!!

There are many advantages of hiring virtual assistants from a virtual assistant staffing agency. For starters, the vetting process is one of the most tedious and lengthy processes but once it is done successfully – you can be all carefree. Apart from this, you are signing the contract with a bunch of talented virtual assistants, so, you are blessed with too many options and varieties according to your job requirements. Another major benefit is you can customize talent according to your needs. Like say, either you hire 3 different virtual assistants for 3 different roles or you just ask them to find someone who knows all the 3 tasks or can get himself/ herself trained for the desired role. Along with this, the onboarding and payrolling system is smooth as the staffing agency takes care of it. Besides, you also save your precious resources when it comes to hiring virtual assistants as they are mostly trained.

Why Accoance?

Because you will find your best fit here – be it an administrative virtual assistant, or an accounting virtual assistant, or a recruitment virtual assistant!

You will find them all here! So, what are you waiting for! You are only one click away to find your next hire!

The Benefits of Hiring a Skilled Virtual Assistant

Are you looking forward to expanding your business? Want to cut down operational costs, speed up the recruitment process, and invest most of your time & energy for your other business functions?

You know who your perfect fit is – a virtual assistant. Now, let us begin with the virtual assistant tour!

Who is a virtual assistant?

A virtual assistant is a contractor who will provide your company with a series of services such as administration work (scheduling calls/meetings, managing calendars, answering to emails, preparing excel sheets/presentations) to skilled work such as (recruitment, bookkeeping, payrolling, accounting, talent research, lead generation, content creation, social media management, etc.) from a remote location, without any supervision needed from your side.

Virtual assistants have been in the corner for almost a decade now, but they have been mostly popular for the admin work. With changing times, their skills have polished as well and now, we can hire them for any skilled job as well.

From small scale businesses to MNCs, they all hire the virtual assistants mainly for the admin work. Nowadays, we can also find they are being hired for the skilled work as well. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has struck, the last two years have made the culture of hiring virtual assistants popular as they already have had the experience to work remotely with efficiency. We have the views of how companies like Spotify, Netflix, Apple, Meta have a mixed response towards the new change in work culture.

Why hire a virtual assistant?

Cost effective: Hiring a virtual assistant saves a lot of your finances. For starters, they don’t need to be physically present in the office, that is your workplace savings. They have a home office or are working from an offshore company. Also, they pay for their own internet connections, and sometimes tools and software’s they use to aid with your tasks.
Directed time investment: Now, this is applicable for small scale businesses, they’ll take care of your backend (admin)jobs like managing your calendars, booking your travels, answering calls, drafting emails, making reservations, data entry etc. while you stay focused with your other parts of your business – making objectives, targets, meeting up with potential stakeholders & investors, generating revenues. Also, you don’t need to hire and train an employee with the tedious & mundane jobs.
Contract flexibility: In a conventional setting, a full-time employee is paid by hours worked per day, in contrast, usually, a virtual assistant is paid not by hours but in terms of the tasks they do.

Why hire from a virtual assistant staffing agency?

Let’s walk through the benefits of hiring Virtual assistants from any Virtual assistant staffing agency.

One of the major reasons is, it helps you with the vetting process; where most of the organizations lose their time while making joint contracts. Vetting process is a process where you will decide to make a contract with the respective agency once you have made a thorough investigation with regards to their business background.

Another reason, interim help. Many a times, you will be a handful of tedious and heavy jobs and short of staff, that’s when virtual staffing agencies can step in and be of huge assistance as you can hire a temporary employee of theirs until your needs are met.

Besides this, when you are signing the contract with the respective virtual staffing agency, you are almost signing a contract with a large pool of candidates with similar talent or more than your current requirement. You get the luxury to sift the talents and find the perfect fit for you.

Apart from this, it saves you a bunch of time and you can invest it elsewhere for your other business function. The question is how? The employees onboarding and payrolling process will be handled by the agency and all you need to do is draft and sign the contract and pay for the invoices. Neat and sleek, isn’t it!

Finally, the process of hiring speeds up as the agency knows your pre-requisites for the job profile as well as they are aware of their employees’ talents and skill sets. Again, you also have the guarantee of the effectiveness and quality of the employees as the vetting process was successfully done.

In a nutshell, hiring a virtual assistant is one of the best decisions for a growing venture company. Remote working is the new era of work culture – that is getting acceptable and more and more universal which in turn makes a growing need for skilled virtual assistants.

Why Accoance Technologies?

We, here at Accoance have a set of dedicated virtual assistants who are ready to help you. The services we can provide you with are,

Executive PA support: In need of assistance to manage your work and schedule! We’ll aid you with diary /inbox/ calendar management, travel/personal reservations, research & reports, event organization.
Data Entry: Data entry is one of the most tedious jobs! We’ll aid you with the best data entry specialists. Your work will be done with utmost speed and accuracy, you need not worry about cross-checking.
Customer Support: Worried about missing clients and customers! We’ll aid you with our customer support specialist who can make and receive calls, resolve the queries/tickets raised over calls, mails, and chats.
Accounting VA support: Need a hand or two to keep tabs on your finances! We’ll aid you with QuickBooks/ Xero certified advisors to check and to keep up-to-date with your accounts.
Real Estate VA: In need of talent who understands Real Estate business tasks! We’ll aid with best talents who have attention to detail and deal with repetitive tasks and paperworks for your client, along with follow ups from clients for the positive outcomes.
Talent Acquisition VA: Finding the right fit for your company and/or client is made easy! We’ll aid you with sifting resumes/ screening/ processing of the selected candidates till the final interview.

So, what are you waiting for, hire the best talents for your job from Accoance! Still have queries – get in touch – we are just a few clicks away.