How To Use a Virtual Assistant Properly: 12 Effective Tips

Virtual assistants, the most talkative issue recently, make individuals, entrepreneurs, and business lives easier and more flexible. The same goes for you if you have already hired one or are about to hire a new virtual employee.

Do you already have experience working in a virtual environment? This is different from on-site work, as there is no face-to-face communication. Thus, to manage a virtual assistant and get the most output from them, there are some tips and tricks that work. Today, we will discuss the same.

We will see how you can smooth your communication so there remains no barrier, and you assign tasks, get them done, and reduce the pressure from your head. Trust me, by going through the tips, you will learn a lot about making an easy-going life with your virtual assistant.

How Working Pressure Are You Feeling Right Now?

 

Virtual assistants are serving huge industries by reducing extra pressure and burden. But under what pressure should you go for the hiring process? Go through this checklist and asses if your condition is alike.

• You’re constantly feeling overwhelmed and overburdened.
• Your work-life balance is disappearing.
• Your day is packed with time-consuming and distracting tasks. You regularly work 10, 12, or 16-hour days, and important things are slipping through the cracks.
• You still feel like you’re playing catch-up.
• You don’t have the time and energy to propel your business forward.
• You lack the expertise for certain tasks.
• Staying organized is a constant battle.
• You’re always struggling to meet deadlines.
• You’re spending over 20 minutes a day scheduling meetings and checking emails.
• You’re losing out on sales because you don’t have an updated client and prospect database and are too swamped to input the necessary information into your CRM.

Your condition must be like one of those situations and identify your business type, perhaps you might have hired a remote assistant or are about to do it. So, let’s see how you can manage them from the beginning to get the most output from your VA.

How Do You Manage Your New Virtual Assistant?

Today, individuals or companies are hiring virtual assistants without any preparation or plan for how to work with them. This will be your big mistake if you follow their path. You can read this valid hiring process.

You cannot walk to your virtual employees and communicate. Nor can the virtual helper easily collaborate with you face-to-face. This is why you need to know how to work with virtual employees.

To make your life easier, here are 12 key points I have mentioned from the beginning until you and your VA get comfortable working together.

1. Maintain Regular Meeting And Audit

You are delegating tasks to your assistant on a virtual platform, so you both need clear communication. This way, the virtual assistant can understand his responsibilities and your expectations. You can also know their abilities, limitations, and whether they are doing the right tasks.

These need regular meetings and audits. Make the communication flexible enough, so your VA can reach you whenever needed.

By doing so, you can improve your relationship with the virtual worker. The better your relationship is, the better the output you can expect from your VA.

2. Use Multiple Task Management & Communication Tools

We discussed the importance of task management and communication between you and your VA, which landed us using tools for efficiency. Working virtually tools are most important, so your task gets done perfectly.

You must use, select, and provide productivity tools for your VA. Remote helpers possess better knowledge about using digital tools. Ask them too if they have any specific preferences.

3. Give Homework For First Time

Now, before you give tasks to your VA, give them some homework. This may seem irrelevant to you, but trust me, it will save a lot of time. If the employee can not understand the task properly or make any mistake, you can solve the issue. But what if they make some mistakes in your core tasks? You may need to bear a big loss.

4. Assign The Tasks And Influence To Research

From the very beginning, assign the tasks clearly to your virtual assistant. For instance, you need help with regular data entry or social media management. Give your VA a list of the tasks, with deadlines and clear expectations. This will also reduce your time from supervising the VA frequently.

Next, try to influence your VA research more for any particular tasks they are asked to do. We already mentioned a good relationship, by which you can directly ask them to do in-depth research without hurting their sentiment.

5. Ask For Reporting Of The Project

When you are done delegating responsibilities to your VA, ask them to report regularly. They can report daily, weekly, monthly, or after completion of the project. Since you both have just started working together, daily reports can better assess their work.

For others who are working for quite a long daily reporting is not necessary, but make sure the virtual helper provides the report on time.

6. Check Day-To-Day Task

Once your VA starts working and reports to you daily, check their day-to-day tasks. I know you are already busy with tons of other work, but you have to put in a bit of effort in the beginning so that later, you can fully trust your VA and their work. By checking everyday tasks, track their hours, you can find mistakes, and the remote worker gets a chance to resolve them and not repeat them the next day.

7. Must Share Working Feedback

Working on feedback does not only mean you tell the right or wrong to your virtual assistants. It means he/she will share his/her opinion or feedback. When both of you do so, then both can know where to improve.

8. Do A Good Behave

Sharing feedback is a great way to make things work better, but at the same time, you should be careful with your behavior. The tone should not be aggressive or negative. When you approach positive behavior and show the shortcomings in a positive manner, the VA will try to resolve them and appreciate you. But, the thing is that a negative approach can make the employee not do better. Also, maintain professionalism since you are in a work environment.

9. Find The Obstacles

While working with your VA, there can be some obstacles you should be aware of and try to fix as soon as possible. Differences in time zone, culture, and language with the VA, or you may doubt the productivity. Then, try to overcome the issues by collaborating with your assistant.

10. Manage Workshop And Training Materials

You can provide workshops and training materials and create learning opportunities for them. This way, they can develop their skills and help you strategically and smartly. Motivate them to participate in the workshops and learn. Do not directly show your personal benefit; rather, tell them about the personal growth they can have.

11. Discuss About Your Mission And Vission

Only assigning specific tasks to your VA is not enough if you want to grow your business. You can discuss your mission and vision. With these remote, fresh perspectives, you can get new ideas and plans. Also, the remote employee will feel motivated and valued when you have such conversations.

12. Try To Make A Long Time Agreement

So, managing your VA and how to work with them takes time and effort, and you do not want to repeat the same. You are grooming and training your virtual assistant, creating your personalized work environment, and thus trying to make a long-term agreement. Working for a long time with the employee, they can better understand your needs without saying anything.

Tools Lists for Managing A VA That You Can Use

Virtual assistants are already making your life easier, but if you start using digital tools, your life can be the smoothest you have ever imagined. Check out some tools, from time tracking, scheduling, and automation to document management. I have enlisted tools for you, but you can also check alternatives.

Slack: You can use this tool for communication, like messaging, chat, sending files, make groups. This communication software is easy to use for anyone.

Asana: This is a tool that you and the virtual assistant can use to track projects properly.

Google Drive: This is mostly used and a free tool for secure file sharing and collaborations.

Harvest: When working with a virtual worker, tracking their time is the most important where Harvest is one of the best tools to use.

1Password: You will need to share passwords of several software or others with your VA. Using 1Password, you can manage all the passwords in one place that is shareable with your VA.

Calendly: You will never miss a meeting with your virtual helper by using scheduling tools like Calendly.

OneNote: To create and manage notes, databases, and organize information, and tasks OneNote can be useful.

Automation: Automating tasks is the smartest way to do more tasks in less time, where you and your VA can use Zapier to reduce repetitive time-consuming tasks.

Benefits Of Managing Virtual Assistant Effectively

When you manage your virtual assistant effectively you can avail more benefits. These benefits include,

• With clear interaction with the VA, they will adapt to your business needs. You no longer need to make them understand what you want; they will do all of it for you.
• Since you will be training your virtual assistant from the beginning you can better know what they are best at and their weak points. You can only assign what you know they can do. There will be less risk and mistakes.
• You can focus on high ROI as you will not be involved in giving administrative support.
• As you build a good relationship with your VA, they tend to retain you longer. This reduces the hassle of recruiting new ones, saving you time and effort.

Conclusion

Virtual assistants one of the virtue is their adaptability. They will blend with your work environment and working process. So, it mostly depends on how you manage your virtual assistant.

Working with tons of virtual assistants in my life, I have learned a lot of tricks on how to manage them and get every piece of my work done. Thus, I shared the tricks with you, such as how you should maintain regular communication. Set goals for your VA first and audit them regularly. Most importantly, try to have a good bond so you and the VA can handle any obstacle that comes up in the virtual workplace.