Running a startup isn’t easy. Working day and night to grow your business and manage your team all at once is tough and hectic. I have been an advocate of quality above quantity all my life, but when my partner and I decided to start a fresh business ourselves, we realized that delivering the best quality is near impossible without a good team. This is where all business owners like us have to step up and hire a virtual assistant.
While some can argue that making this decision was simply us being lazy and not putting enough effort into the business, it was rather a necessity. We needed to keep our name in the limelight in a competitive market. We needed someone to look after repetitive tasks, so the team could focus on the core objectives.
How does it make any difference, you ask? Take graphic designing, for instance. We could be creative geniuses but none of us could put it as a high-priority task. We can only afford and accommodate a single designer but that is not enough to cope up with this fast-paced digital world. He would work on multiple projects and oversee timely delivery, but the overwhelming workload resulted in a devastating state of affairs for our small business.
On realizing how important it is to present yourself and your work professionally, we weighed out the pros and cons of hiring a VA and went ahead with the decision that transformed our business dramatically.
We managed to keep the business growing only because our workload was less than before. We could put our productivity to better use and employ the time to build a stronger team and make business strategies instead of worrying about micromanaging, literally everything. It proved to be, not only, cost-efficient, as we did not have to bear any extra cost for physical space or to pay any employee, but also helped with better time management and teamwork, too.
Nevertheless, none of this was possible to achieve in a fortnight. There were horrible experiences involved. What I have learned from my experience is that monitoring your virtual assistant is as important as other tasks. Read on further to find out how you can monitor your VA.
Communication is the key
Before even hiring a virtual worker, you should build a solid communication system first which will help you stay connected with them. Choose whatever works best for you. Generally, video calls on Skype or emails are professionally acceptable though using an instant messaging tool can help promote a better engagement with the remote team worker.
If possible, it is always a good idea to set up weekly meetings with them, instead of online communication. Share your vision with them, so they can better understand your business and your needs. Make them feel inclusive and let them know they are as much of a part of your team as others are.
Set Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
KPIs help you measure your overall business performance and team execution. It is important to document what you expect from your VA before hiring them. Think of what you want the VA to accomplish by the end of a day, a week, or a month, and set your level accordingly. However, make sure to set an achievable KPI in accordance with your VA’s capabilities. Like your other team members, your remote team member is a human too and can have a different pace than everyone else.
Whenever we would have a social event coming up, our designer would hand over the tasks to the VA. So it would go like ‘We need to first start with invitation design’, ‘We would have to send email campaigns’, ‘Social media marketing’, and so on. This would help us in setting KPI for the VA.
Set suitable work hours and maintain a timesheet
Make your assistant clear when you want them to work. When you start a new project, ask them to give you a detailed report about the tasks assigned. Maintaining a timesheet is helpful in this regard. This will give you a thorough insight into how long a task took your VA to complete. Doing so will also help you monitor if your VA is utilizing the work hours optimally.
Again, take graphic design for example. After giving a list of tasks for a given week, I would personally ask for the timesheet to see how it worked out. This helps me see how capable my VA is and if I should consider assigning a different task that I think is more suitable for them.
Ask for a regular progress report
Require your virtual worker to send a daily and weekly report on progress to track if the VA meets the goal. This not only helps you keep track of your remote team members but also helps with better team management and work productivity.
I always look forward to the progress report. Every time there is positive progress, it is as if the VA is screaming out of the report, ‘We are in this together’. It feels great to witness a sense of responsibility, teamwork, and good time management achieved altogether.
Alternatively, consider investing in a good VA services provider instead
Why do all the work when you can get it done by someone responsible and professional? I do agree, hiring and monitoring a VA can still be quite time-consuming and a bit expensive.
Just because someone had to walk through that hectic lane of hiring and monitoring a VA, does not mean you have to do it too. Consider getting in touch with a professional yet budget-friendly VA services provider, someone like Prossistant preferably, who can do all working on your behalf.
Prossistant offers a fixed monthly/weekly subscription plan tailored to the client’s requirements. Their professional reporting system provides timesheets, daily reports as well as weekly and monthly progress. All you need to do is to provide them with your KPI and they can take care of the rest.
Starting your own business is a lot of work, especially when you are an entrepreneur starting small and the budget is tight. Hiring a VA not only helps you save some capital but also helps improve productivity and time management. Yet, it can still require some of your time to monitor them. This is why Prossistant is an excellent choice.
You can save the rest of your precious time spent on monitoring your virtual assistant when you take Prossistant’s service. Think about it, you know what you need to accomplish, you set a KPI and hand it over to the Prossistant. In return, you get regular progress reports and timesheets without needing to maintain them yourself. For anyone who needs to boost his or her business and is looking for an efficient solution, Prossistant is the most reliable and budget-friendly way out.