As the world continues to adapt post-COVID, more and more small-to-medium businesses are tapping into the gig economy for lightning-fast access to a myriad of skills, like a virtual assistant.
None more prominently than the burgeoning VA space – a means to access support across everything from marketing to managing inboxes, automation to analytics reporting.
But the big question is this: Is it better to hire this support in-house (as a full-time staffer), or tap into the specialised remote VA workforce?
While it can be tempting to think that the former comes with more loyalty, skill and security, you might be surprised to know it’s actually the opposite.
Let’s look at the top 5 reasons why.
5 key benefits of hiring a remote VA over in-house admin support
Scale your operations quickly
For the average business owner who is wearing too many hats, having the right help to hand is key to scaling up and scaling well – especially if, like many founders and owners, their strong suit isn’t organisation or attention to detail.
Having a clerical-minded remote VA who has experience making sense of chaos, working with different personality types and diving in without hand-holding is key to growth.
They can see the chaff from the wheat where you may not be able to, and according to a McKinsey work survey – more and more people are coming around to the benefits of automation services for growth (something many VAs are skilled in implementing).
In fact, respondents noted that they would be 3 times likelier to have at least 80% of their customer interactions in digital form.
If this is something you’ve been keen on exploring, a remote VA with automation and process experience is a sure bet.
Lowered training costs
Hiring full-time (or even part-time) permanent help is expensive.
In Australia alone, you’ve got to consider not only a salary, but leave entitlements, super obligations, longevity benefits and commissions.
You may have to invest in subscription-based HR software to keep on top of this paperwork, and also think of any onboarding training expenses.
If you employ someone permanently, you will probably also need to provide them with a computer, as well as provide a training and setup allowance for their home office and internet.
These costs don’t exist when you bring on a remote VA because not only do they cover their own equipment and set-up costs, but they maintain their own insurance and professional development.
Experienced remote VAs are familiar with onboarding for various clients quickly (moreso if they specialise in that field), and many can even put together great documents to on-board other new hires so the future hiring of staff is more efficient, too.
More flexible all-round support
While ‘all-rounder’ admin support seems great in theory, in practice, it’s professionally problematic.
Someone who is good at a bit of everything may not be exceptional in anything, and this means that deep problem-solving work and complex process improvement is more likely to fall to the wayside. (Hint: there are great VAs who are super passionate about this kind of work!).
So, hiring specialised help in areas that you know you need a heavyweight mind in will always be better than bringing on someone who is a generalist.
The best thing about remote VAs is that due to the nature of their work, it’s not unfeasible to bring on multiple VAs in a contract capacity for different areas at the same time – and all for the same price, or less, than a full-time staffer.
Quality is guaranteed
In Australia, good VAs are a-plenty, and when you hire through somewhere like the Virtual Assistant Lead Network, you can be sure you’re getting the best.
With hundreds of highly qualified Australian VAs and OBMs in our network, you can gain instant access to an incredible virtual workforce with a diverse range of skills and experience.
Extensive talent pool
As the media and business landscape changes, niche VA skills are more in demand than ever – and the workforce that’s upskilling the fastest to meet this need? Remote VAs.
Take everything from executive assistance to podcast management, paid traffic and ads management, community management, tech and automation expertise, paralegal proofing, affiliate marketing management, NDIS admin – even down to managing company Pinterest boards (yes, that’s a whole thing now!). Niche VA workers are much more likely to work contract-based versus full-time, and find their work via remote channels like ours.
So, if you have a specific need for a task that you wouldn’t know how to normally hire for, put the call out to remote VA workers – there’s probably a niche for that.
How this works in practice
Jamie runs a small legal firm in regional Ballarat, Victoria.
She specialises in property and conveyancing law and employs 5 local people.
She’s also a super busy working Mum of three young kids, and has realised that she needs help with getting great, regular content out for SEO, and simplifying some of her inbound customer funnel workflows via her CRM software.
Jamie has no idea how to do this herself and doesn’t really have time to learn, so she uses the Virtual Assistant Lead Network to find her ideal candidate.
It’s easy to post a job (and the team at the VA Lead Network even have a free chat with her to understand her needs, thus helping her write it).
Within a week, she’s interviewed 8 great candidates and boiled it down to Joan and Matthew, two remote VAs.
Joan is a gun with everything copywriting and content planning, having worked in an SEO content role for a big agency for many years. Matthew lives and breathes everything automation, and even has expert certification in the very CRM Jamie’s team uses.
Once she’s worked out their hourly-rate figures (approximately 10 hours a week each), she realises that she can hire both in a job share arrangement, allowing her to tap into both sets of expertise. Roughly a month, this costs her $6,000 – $8,500 AUD, which would be less than what she had originally anticipated for a full-time staffer.
Her VAs are communicative, friendly, adaptable and easy to work with, and overall she gets what she needs economically.
💡Hiring a virtual assistant doesn’t have to be hard or scary.
Create your virtual role brief or book a free 15-minute call now to discuss your needs.
We’re here to help, and our community is ready to go.