For a long time, your options for getting a business support role covered were pretty limited. You either hired someone full time, brought in a VA to help with tasks, or you didn't get the role covered at all. And if you chose the last option, the work still needed doing, which meant it landed on you, got split across people who were already stretched, or quietly fell through the cracks.
Most business owners have been through the hiring cycle enough times to know how it goes. You write the job ad, sort through the applications, interview, make an offer, and spend weeks getting the person up to speed. You invest time and money in the process, and then you hope it works out. Sometimes it does. Sometimes the person leaves after six months and you start again.
There's also plenty that doesn't show up in the salary figure of an employee. Kiwisaver contributions, covering annual and sick leave, ACC levies, recruitment fees, office equipment and overheads, and the weeks of lost productivity while someone finds their feet. A role that looks like it costs $55,000 a year rarely does once you add it all up.
The VA route can feel like the more flexible option, and in some cases it is. But traditional VA support is typically task-based. You send work across, it gets done, and you move on. What it doesn't give you is someone who owns a role, understands your business deeply, and takes responsibility for the outcomes week in, week out. For businesses that need a function properly covered rather than a list of tasks ticked off, that gap matters.
The result is that a lot of business owners end up doing one of two things. They go through the full hiring process, absorb all of that cost and risk, and hope for the best. Or they decide it's not worth it and quietly keep doing the work themselves, telling themselves they'll sort it when things settle down. Things rarely settle down.
There's a third option, and it looks quite different from either of those.
The model we've built at Strictly Savvy is based on a simple idea: instead of filling a role with a single person, we take it on as a team. You hand us the job description and we take it on completely, as an ongoing function of your business, not a stopgap while you figure out the next hire.
Your dedicated Role Manager owns the day-to-day and is your single point of contact. Behind them sits our wider NZ-based team, a skilled global support team, and smart automations running in the background. You deal with one person. The role runs properly, week in, week out.
It could be your entire admin and accounts function. Your EA and scheduling support. Your operations coordination. Whatever the role looks like for your business, we figure out the right mix and we take it on.
What does it cost?
The fixed weekly rate is $958, the equivalent of minimum wage, with none of the costs associated with an employee. No Kiwisaver, no leave entitlements, no recruitment costs, no office overheads, and no long-term contract. When you compare that against the true cost of a full-time hire, the numbers tend to make the case on their own.
We're often asked how that's possible. The answer is straightforward: a dedicated Role Manager, supported by a skilled team and smart systems running in the background, can deliver the outcomes of a full-time role without any of the overhead that comes with employing someone directly. You're paying for the output, not the employment relationship around it.
What does getting started actually look like?
We've been supporting NZ businesses since 2012, and that experience means we know how businesses like yours run before we've even had the first conversation. Once you're on board, we match you with the right Role Manager, and from day one they get stuck in alongside the wider team to understand your business, map the processes, and start delivering the role.
Behind the scenes, our Tech Lead works to identify and automate the repeatable background processes early, so the team isn't doing manually what a smart system can handle. The result is a role that runs more efficiently from the outset and gets smoother over time, without you needing to be involved in any of it.
There's no lengthy onboarding process, and no months of hand-holding. You hand it over, and we get on with it.
If there's a role in your business that needs filling, or you've been quietly doing work that shouldn't be reaching you, we'd love to talk through what it would look like. Book a chat with us and let's figure out if we're a good fit.
