Outsourcing and working with virtual assistants is now a common strategy for many UK businesses. According to research by Opinium and LiveArea, 28% of UK companies are looking to outsource at least one business area in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, firms considering working with a virtual business support firm for the first time may be unsure where to start. So, we set out to answer some of the big questions firms may have, including when to outsource, advantages and what to expect from working with a VA.
1 | When is the right time to outsource and hire a VA?
Often, businesses will leave it too late to start hiring additional support. By the time they reach out, they’re already noticing pressure points that could be addressed by outsourcing.
Here are some of the most frequent signs that it’s time to outsource:
- You or your team are struggling with unmanageable workloads.
- There’s no time for business development and growth.
- Specialist tasks are delayed or dropped due to a lack of capacity.
- Admin and day-to-day tasks either dominate diaries or are neglected altogether.
If you recognise any of these issues within your firm it could be time to hire a virtual assistant.
2 | What are the advantages of virtual business support Vs traditional recruitment
In the past, if businesses needed extra capacity, they would hire additional permanent staff. However, this isn’t always the best solution, here’s why…
How hiring virtual business support compares to traditional recruitment:
| Traditional recruitment | Virtual Business Support (e.g. virtual assistants) |
| High ‘on-costs’ – providing a desk, equipment and paying for sick pay, holiday pay, pension contributions etc. | Routine costs (equipment, accommodation, holiday/sick pay etc.) rest with the VA rather than the business. |
| Year-round costs, even if the staff member isn’t fully utilised. | A fully flexible cost model – businesses pay for additional hours when needed and less when they’re quiet. |
| Business bears the cost of any recruitment. | Easier and more cost-effective recruitment/enrolment process. |
| Business recruits to a specific post with a defined range of skills and experiences. | Access to varied skill sets – businesses can work with different VAs with specialist skills. |
3 | What should we ask a potential VA before working with them?
The job of a VA is to make your working life easier. They’re an additional resource to your business and will usually be able to flex in capacity to meet your needs.
It’s important to find a VA who is a good fit for your business. Here are our top tips for doing this…
- Ask about the VAs experience and skills.
- Discuss your needs in terms of hours per week/month and the availability of the VA.
- Discuss how you’d both like to work and keep in touch (phone calls, emails, online meetings etc).
- Describe some of the problems you’re facing and ask how the VA would help in those areas.
4 | What can we expect when hiring virtual business support?
Working with a VA is a formal business arrangement. You should both set out what you want and expect from one another and it may be useful to formalise this in a contract. Once you start working together, it’s important to keep in touch regularly. This helps ensure progress is made and expectations are being met.
Here’s our process for working with new clients and keeping in touch with them to make sure they’re happy.
5 | Our business works in a specialist sector, could a VA still help?
One concern businesses often have is that a VA won’t understand their company or industry. It’s true that some sectors do require some additional expertise. We specialise in providing support to the legal, finance, property and medical sectors. This is because our team have expertise in these areas and have worked in firms providing these services. As a result, we can often help with more technical and specialist tasks. However, a lot of outsourced work requires broad admin and business skills that are transferrable between industries. This means we can still support businesses from a wide range of industries and sectors.
6 | What services are available from a virtual business support firm?
The VA industry is full of experienced professionals with diverse career backgrounds. This means that you should be able to find someone to help with any tasks you need.
We operate as an associate virtual business support firm. This means that we have a team of skilled VAs that can each help with different tasks and business areas.
Here are some of the main services we provide:
- Client onboarding processes (KYC / Engagement Letter)
- Consultant onboarding processes
- CRM management
- Diary management
- Travel organisation (research, planning and itineraries)
- Creating, sending and chasing invoices
- Document management (including creation, setting up styles, formatting, editing, tables of contents, cross referencing filing and organisation)
- Document proofreading
- Clio Grow & Manage support
- Event management
- Project management
- Tracking and recording expenses
- Audio typing, transcribing and minute-taking
- Research
- Data inputting
- Website updates
- Social media management
- Copywriting, including blog writing and email marketing
Find out more about our services.
7 | What do businesses say about the benefits of working with virtual assistants?
If you’re considering outsourcing to a virtual business support firm, you’ll want to know how your business will benefit. For this, we asked our clients!
They had lots of lovely things to say – but some key messages came up several times – around flexibility, saving money, streamlining processes and helping free up time in the work day…
‘You help make us a better business. It’s as simple as that…The flexibility is great. As much or as little as we need. And excellent value for money.’
Alistair Stewart | Loney Stewart Holland
‘My day is freed up so much from a fairly significant amount of work which gives me that bandwidth and opportunity to drive things forward.’
Bill Cogan | Seven Legal
‘Having Kellie and her team pick up onboarding, collecting ID, client care letters etc, it just allows things to run while I’m busy and I’ve got other things to do. So building those processes, it’s just kind of another step towards getting this automated type of business that we need to get to.’
Matt Turner | Shoredons & Co. Solicitors
‘The key thing was the flexibility. As I say, we didn’t need someone full time and we wouldn’t have enough work for somebody full-time. If you employ someone two or three days a week, it will of course happen that the days that they are in, you don’t have the documents for them to work on. And then the other days you are short and have to wait for them to come in.’
Charlotte Surridge | RW Blears LLP
Are you ready to start working with a virtual business support firm?
Hopefully, this blog post has helped to answer some of the main questions you may have had about working with virtual assistants. However, if you still have queries, please contact our Director, Kellie. You’ll be able to discuss your business and any current challenges and find out how we could support you through outsourcing.
