While old fashion way of hiring in-office employees still exist as a major solution to staffing needs, some small business owners implemented new way of doing business aligned with a current – 21st century technology and that is hiring a Virtual Assistant who works remotely.
There are endless advantages of hiring an independent contractor or Virtual Assistant instead of bringing new stuff into the office and we are going to list the major ones:
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Cost effective solution. Paying $30 per hour to your Virtual Assistant is cheaper than paying $10 to an employee. Yes, the math is correct. Your Virtual Assistant will charge you only for his productive time, which is the time invested in the project. How many hours per day your employees work officially? About 8, correct? How many productive hours they have on average? Statistics say between 4 and 5 hours per working day. Your Virtual Assistant will not charge you for his lunch break or coffee / cigarette break. A Virtual Assistant doesn’t charge for medical insurance and you are not going to pay for his sick leave. You do not pay 401K or Social Security to your Virtual Assistant. A Virtual Assistant can work holidays, but if he doesn’t – you don’t pay for it. Take your calculator, do the math and you will see that paying a Virtual Assistant $30/hour is much cheaper than paying even $10/hour to an employee.
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Virtual Assistant loves his job. Unlike employees who are often cut-up in office politics, unhappy with the way how supervisors are treating them, Virtual Assistants have a joy working for themselves as independent contractors. Virtual Assistants take proactive approach towards everything new that needs to be learned, since it is in their interest to know as much as possible about everything that would benefit their clients and make their work easier. Attitude of Virtual Assistant is, quite frankly, more cheerful than the attitude of office employees. It is such a pleasure to work with someone who loves what he does, isn’t it?
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Virtual Assistant can expand your business. Virtual Assistant works with a few clients at the time, especially if he is focused only on Niche industry such as Freight Forwarding or Supply Chain, so he is always well connected with other people from the industry and he can bring you some new clients without even charging you for sales.
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Quality of work. Good Virtual Assistant is focused on delivering good quality of work to his clients. Virtual Assistant is aware of the fact that cooperation is purely based on results that he achieves and unlike office employee Virtual Assistant doesn’t “kill the time”, but rather tries to use it in the most productive way.
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No obligation. While it is hard to find an employee and train him to do the job, letting him go if he doesn’t perform well or if there is no need to keep him any longer can be even harder. Some businesses have “cold season” when the business is literally dead, but the business owner still has to keep an employee and pay for his non-productive time. That is not the case with Virtual Assistant – you can hire him when you need him, put him on “stand-by” when the business is slow and re-activate his services when the business and workflow increase.
