Hiring a virtual assistant (VA) is a no-brainer for many businesses. They're flexible and can easily adapt to your business needs, whether that means working more or less hours each week.
More and more companies are turning to VAs as a low-risk way to handle tasks like admin, bookkeeping and creative work. One of the key reasons being is that you can scale their service up or down as needed. Unlike hiring an employee, you don't have to worry about the headache of HR regulations when hours need to rapidly increase or decrease as a reflection of your workload.
To give you an idea of how this works, let's look at examples of businesses that scaled up or down during the first lockdown. Even now, the same principles apply.
Upscaled Service:
During the first lockdown, many business coaches and consultants found themselves with more work than usual, as their clients sought extra help and advice to navigate the uncertainty they were facing.
A virtual assistant was able to accommodate this increased workload simply by increasing their dedicated hours. For example, a business coach who worked with a VA agency could rely on the help of multiple VAs at once.
This scenario not only helped the business coach, but also the coach's clients, who continued to receive fast and efficient service even with increased demand.
In contrast, if the business coach had hired an employee, the additional hours that the employee could have worked would be capped at what one person could be reasonably expected to do.
The only option to increase this capacity would be to hire a new employee, which could be costly and unnecessary once the workload returns to pre-lockdown levels.
A VA provides a flexible solution that allows businesses to quickly address additional work without the hassle or risk of hiring a new employee.
Downscaled Service:
Using a VA was a game changer for businesses that had to scale down during tough times.
Trades-based businesses like electricians, plumbers, and builders who couldn't work remotely during lockdown were able to easily adjust the amount of support they received from their VA.
They could work with their VA on a casual basis as tasks came up, without being stuck with an employee on contracted hours who had little to no work to do.
The flexibility of being able to scale down or up at a moment's notice is one of the biggest benefits of using a VA. Your VA's productivity and efficiency stays at 100% no matter how much or how little work they have to do.
Ready to talk about how a virtual assistant could work for you? Book your no-obligation discovery call with our friendly team here.
