The emergence of virtual assistants during the new normal

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 ?

  1. A pool of talent where you can sift through people according to your requirements.
  2. Swift onboarding and payrolling system of the VAs from our end. Hence, clearing more of your time.
  3. 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!

How are Virtual Assistants different from conventional employee

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!