elev8_vc, Author at Virtual Coworker

Trying to do too much at once won’t allow you to operate at a high level. That’s why delegation is integral to business growth. If you have a product your launching for example that is likely one of your more important goals. You should be actively working towards ensuring the progress of this goal. If you’re getting bogged down by your day-to-day which is impeding the progress of this launch then that’s where outsourcing can help free up more hours in the day.

Delegating processes that aren’t contributing to this task is the way forward for growth. One of the ways CEOs manage a lot of the heavy lifting that comes their way is by delegating. With delegations comes more free time to focus on things that matter.

Think about it, if you’re a one-man show your business is not going to experience growth. Administrative tasks, data entry, researching, emailing the list goes on!

For most people this is a worry, thankfully there is a solution and that’s with hiring offshore staff to help with day to day tasks that inevitably we all find ourselves in.

Outsourcing to the Philippines put simply provides you with the solutions to these problems. It alleviates you from the day to day and gives you back more hours. It allows you to increase productivity and focus on the bigger picture. Understanding the process and finding the right fit are of course important components to help you grow your business.

With an incredible work ethic, strong English it’s clear why the Philippines is one of the most widely sought after countries for finding quality candidates.

Management time is required to help bring your staff on board and see the vision and purpose of your company so understanding cultural differences is paramount in order to have a successful engagement.

Finally giving your staff the appropriate training and helping onboard them effectively are how you have a successful engagement and help grow your business.

In this day and age, everyone is looking for a magic pill, thinking you can sit back and find some rockstar to do all your heavy lifting is simply unrealistic. Unless you’re willing to provide sufficient onboarding for your staff so that they can do their job effectively you’re not going to get very far. We see time and time again people throwing in the towel because they have unrealistic expectations. It’s always important to remember especially in the beginning that staff members need time to become familiar with the business and processes and not to get overwhelmed. When they find their feet they can grow into the role from there. That’s when you have a rockstar who can assist you with your heavy lifting or maybe even multiple depending on your staffing needs.

Your website is more of a storefront than a business card. It’s a living, breathing entity that can update in real-time, at any time, for whatever reason you choose from just about anywhere. It’s practically magic, you guys. You can share news, announcements, new products or services, establish yourself as an industry leader with insightful blog posts and more – from anywhere with anyone in the world.

But do you? Do you take full advantage of everything your website could be doing to benefit you and your business? Be honest. While you may not make time to regularly update your website, it’s likely that at least one of your direct competitors does.

In the spirit of recharging your motivation and helping you make the most of the rest of 2019, we present you this list to consider today and start tomorrow.

Branding
They say you are the company you keep. If you own a business, you are the website you keep. Are you sloppy and hastily thrown together? Or are you organized, professional and an authority in your respective industry? If you are adaptive, responsive and thoughtful, your website should be, too. Decide who you and your business are and then design and update your website accordingly.

UX
User experience or UX refers to a visitor’s experience with your site, including how easy it is to use, how fast it is, how easy it is to navigate and how little friction there is when visitors try to complete whatever action it is they’re trying to complete. Your website navigation should focus on nudging the right visitor in the right direction.

CTA
Call-to-action. A CTA is a button or link on your website that serves to convert prospective customers into clients by calling them to complete an action. Make sure that your CTAs are prominent, prevalent and compelling enough to elicit the desired ‘push-button-get-banana’ response from visitors.

SEO
Add this to your now mind-blowingly impressive list of tech-savvy acronyms. You’re practically a coder. SEO, or search engine optimization, is how Google will index your site based on a combination of factors, such as the number of inbound links, keyword frequency, relevancy and quality, and how often it is updated. Basically, no updates mean no love from Google or other search engines.

Content
You’ve managed to get users to your site. Now what? Content, that’s what. If the look and layout are your first impression, your site’s content is the first date. Do you offer content that is useful, insightful, helpful and thoughtful? Further, is it compelling and fresh? You may have written the next great American novel but if you posted it five years ago, Google won’t consider it relevant anymore. No second date for you.

Security
While security issues can arise on any website, updated or not, the likelihood of security breaches is much greater for an outdated website as it relies on older, less secure coding and technology. So one of the most important things you can do is to make sure your website’s software stays up-to-date and make sure it’s hosted with a reputable company that cares about security.

Ease of Future Updates
Your future self will be sure to thank your 2019 self because once updated, your website will become infinitely easier to manage, allowing you to update layout designs, blogs, imagery, promotions, and advertisements, while constantly optimizing your website.

Operation Website Recharge Complete. Excited to start your website evolution?
Let Virtual Coworker’s Website Specialists handle the heavy lifting for you – our innovative website ‘gurus’ if you will – so you and your business can shine.

Remote work is growing exponentially around the world. With a population of 107 million in the Philippines and a vast portion residing in Manilla, it’s no wonder commute times are terrible. Traveling can take up to two hours one way just to get into office buildings in the town center. This can be quite detrimental to workers’ health, both physically and psychologically. There’s also exposure to pollution, stress, and risk of an accident. An ideal solution for workers is to work remotely from the comfort of their own homes. With technology these days it’s never been easier to connect and work with a virtual employee. Numerous platforms such as Skype, Zoom, Slack, WhatsApp, and Viber are freely available to aid in fast communication. Connectivity has come a long way in the Philippines with stable internet connections becoming mainstream. Internet outages are much less likely which is helping pave the way for increased remote work. All that’s needed to outsource a skillset is a professional workspace, working laptop/desktop, and adequate internet connection. A typical candidate might be a stay at home mum who’s established in her career. Having family or a nanny to look after the kids allows her to do great work, with less time spent taking the kids to daycare or commuting around the city – it leads to a better work-life balance. Employees are more productive when they are balanced in their lives and perform at higher levels which leads to less stress. Win/win.

In order to have a successful engagement with a staff member, management will need to have the necessary workflow to keep a worker engaged. To successfully induct a new staff member it’s important to overcommunicate at the beginning and set crystal clear expectations. Staff members (virtual or not) require direction which means delegating is required. Having processes in place ahead of schedule are all key elements to set your team up for success. It’s important to understand cultural differences as well. People always appreciate feeling like part of the team. Regular catch ups are vital, particularly in the beginning so that you gain confidence in your staff and them in you. It is important that a staff member has time to find their feet and get familiar with your organization’s processes, once they do they can hit the ground running, building and evolving the role as they grow.

Growing a remote team is easier than most people think. Setting up regular team meetings for your staff even traveling to the Philippines and meeting your staff in person all lead to rapport building and can help you grow your company. Co-sharing workspaces are much more common now in the Philippines which can allow for remote workers to meet up and conduct important training sessions. Holding a team day once a year is an excellent way to build company morale and culture.

At the end of the day how you want to work with your staff is up to you, it all starts with finding the right fit. There are plenty of agencies out there, first, it starts with identifying what your work needs are, if it’s cost effective, and if you have time to train someone or multiple staff. The Philippines has a huge talent pool, excellent work ethic, and a strong command of the English language – it’s no surprise everyone is looking to the Philippines to hire remote workers.

Reach out to us when you’re ready to GROW your business with a rockstar virtual staff member!

Hiring remotely IS the next big thing. With today’s emerging technology, virtual channels, and inclusive culture, companies have much more flexibility. Some businesses have fully remote teams, while many others allow their employees to work remotely at least once a week. According to a 2018 study by Upwork, work done by freelancers has increased 168 percent. This arrangement is only expected to grow.

Our modern workforce is increasingly mobile, collaborative, and dynamic, as well as comprising multi-generations, all with differing communication preferences. These workers span multiple industries, all of whom represent unique challenges when it comes to staying connected while on the job. The transition into managing a remote workforce can seem daunting, but with the right tech and hardworking employees, it can be a fluid process – and fighting the change may do more harm than good.

One of the most helpful technologies for seamless management of remote work is video conferencing (Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, Appear.in, etc). Live video feeds help outsourced workers see and speak with one another in real time anywhere they are, which is the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting. Thanks to video conferencing and shared applications, many companies have even done away with traditional office spaces and instead run their business out of a shared coworking space to accommodate their largely remote workforce. As the current workforce becomes more progressive, virtual tools, like mobile remote-working tools and virtual reality conferencing, will become the preferred form of communication. These capabilities wouldn’t be possible without the widespread internet connectivity progression of the past 10 to 15 years.

Given the top reported benefits of a flexible schedule, more time with family, a more pleasant work environment, and avoidance of office politics many employees now expect remote work opportunities. In fact, according to Buffer.com, 90 percent of current remote workers plan on working remotely for the rest of their careers. Because of this increasingly popular trend, some refuse to accept an onsite position, knowing they can find a more convenient and flexible gig elsewhere.

Due to this trend, organizations should begin to make improvements to their remote work policies and capabilities. A surprising study by Upwork showed how prevalent remote work is becoming by data from more than 1,000 hiring decision makers: 63 percent of companies now have remote workers, yet 57 percent of companies have no remote work policies. If a company is concerned about productivity and performance issues associated with a companywide ability to work from home, we recommend creating standard key performance indicators (KPIs) for both management and employees as well as regular weekly catch up meetings. This way, remote team members are aware of expectations, questions can be resolved, and their performance can be monitored.

Today, AI and machine learning are common, especially in the business world. Most of us interact daily with AI in some form or another, but the truth is there are vast applications of this technology, from the mundane to the breathtaking. As AI and machine learning further escalate, they are becoming an imperative for businesses that want to maintain a competitive edge.Hiring managers believe remote work will change the nature of work, specifically within the design / creative realms and psychological behaviors of company structure, more than A.I.

Outsourcing is a cost-effective way to help grow your business. If you’re bogged down by repetitive tasks it’s a great way to increase productivity and allow you to focus on things that matter. The Philippines has a huge talent pool with a great work ethic, able to work any time zone and a high proficiency of English. With technology these days it has never been easier to connect. Internet connectivity has come a long way in the Philippines and a stable internet is much more mainstream. When hiring a virtual assistant it is important to ensure the staff has a stable internet connection, adequate working space, and an up-to-date laptop/desktop.

Win/Win — Lots of small to medium enterprises can benefit from outsourcing. Virtual assistants in the Philippines receive higher than average wages, avoid terrible commuting times, and are able to enjoy working from home. To successfully outsource it’s important to navigate any pitfalls by understanding cultural differences. Having processes in place ahead of schedule, over communicating, making them feel part of the team and giving the process time to allow the staff to find their feet are all crucial elements in having a successful engagement with the staff. Keeping them engaged is important as well as having the necessary workflow to see the role grow.

Now more than ever, companies of all sizes are using offshore services to help grow their business proving that hiring a dedicated long-term staff member has never been easier. If you’ve ever felt bogged down, hiring a VA allows an increase in productivity and allows you to focus on the things that matter. Streamlining and automating parts of your business starts with identifying areas of the business with which a virtual staff can be utilized. From there it’s simply a matter of creating a job description and finding the right fit.

There are many useful tools which can help the process of training your staff, Skype and Zoom to name a few. Google drive has come a long way which enables collaboration with offshore staff using the cloud. The interview process is important as well, it allows you to experience and assess their communication as well as administer mini-test activities. You want to be able to depend on your staff and see their enthusiasm all these things flow through in the interview process. Everyone wants a great virtual assistant, there are many agencies out there that specialize in finding high-quality VA’s, at the end of the day it comes down to you having the right fit for your business.

Whenever you embark on a new business venture it’s important to keep your expectations in check. It’s so easy to get carried away in the magic of a moment, believing that a new team member, a new project or a new partnership might be a life-changing development for your business. When anticipations are high you can run the risk of having your hopes dashed when initial perception doesn’t quite match the reality of your situation. The truth is expectations impact our attitudes and mindset. When things don’t go as expected we lose motivation and feel like we can’t trust in our own judgment. For an entrepreneur, this can be crippling.

A lot of outsourcing companies market themselves in a way as to present their Virtual Assistants as the answer to every business woe. And don’t get us wrong, utilized correctly a Virtual Assistant can be a highly valuable asset to any business, but they are not going to solve all your problems. With the right mindset and planning in place, you can strike the perfect balance where your expectations align with reality. Here are a few truths that will help you set realistic expectations and get the most out of your outsourcing.

Expectation: Hiring a virtual assistant will solve everything. No need for training or micromanaging.
Reality: Hiring a virtual assistant is just like hiring a regular employee. They will need to be trained in your processes & procedures. Training is a vital part of a new job, the key to training remote staff is over-communication and patience. Everyone has the capability to learn but each person learns at a different pace and in different ways. We’ve found Google drive, Skype, and weekly meetings are extremely helpful in training new virtual staff as well as providing updates, feedback, discussing goals, and checking on project deadlines.

Expectation: Outsourcing is a quick fix to company problems.
Reality: Outsourcing can help companies solve specific challenges, but only if they have a clear map of their objectives upfront. Organizations that are successful with outsourcing are those that turn to outsourcing as a catalyst for change. Set modest and achievable targets. Dream big, but take the pathway there with sustainable and actionable goals. Don’t expect too much of your VA and yourself from the get-go.

Expectation: I don’t need to plan anything before I hire a virtual assistant.
Reality: Educate yourself and set up your business so it is optimized to handle a virtual worker. The best first step is to always have a crystal clear job role description to present to your Recruiter. This will make interviews, expectations, and transitions with your new VA so much smoother and more efficient. By being realistic about the planning stage you’ll set yourself up for success. Take the time to build a great relationship with your Virtual Assistant and focus on developing the role over time.

Expectation: I can give my new virtual assistant any amount of tasks right away.
Reality: When inducting staff, it’s always important not to overwhelm them. It takes time for a new staff member to familiarize themselves with the business and processes. Give them time to get up and running and find their feet. Once you gain confidence in them you can start delegating tasks accordingly, effectively growing the role using their strengths which will ensure success. No one wants a stressed out and flustered employee.

Whatever your ambitions, success takes time. Allow yourself time to reach the goals you have for your company and for your virtual assistant. In any successful journey, it’s important to celebrate small wins. Acknowledging how far you’ve come helps you to gain perspective and sustain enthusiasm in your projects. Be liberal with your praise for a job well done and celebrate your successes with your Virtual Assistant. By developing and maintaining realistic and reasonable expectations you can stay in control and motivated – setting yourself up to maximize the potential of outsourcing and realizing the long term success of your business.

It’s time. You’ve started building your new company and things are taking off. The website has launched, leads are flowing in, marketing campaigns are set up, social media is tweaked and adjusted, payroll is in place, etc. It’s great! However, you’re finding your time slipping away… NOW is the time to hire a virtual assistant or 2. Let’s do it!

Where do you begin? How do you find the best? How do you sift through all the resumes and ask the right questions during interviews? We’re here with an EPIC guide to help you find and hire the TOP virtual assistants. Our process has been compiled based on patterns from the 1,500+ hires we’ve placed and the 40,000 candidates we’ve screened.

Step 1 Define the role
Go through your day to day tasks and write everything down. It should take less than 5 minutes. Begin with your morning: phone calls, checking emails, following up, appointments, etc. Then rate them from easiest to hardest. Easiest meaning the most repetitive and mundane duties that could easily be performed by someone with the proper understanding of the process and a little bit of practice. Once you have your list ordered from easiest to hardest, look at the tasks you’ve placed at the top of your list. Those are the first responsibilities you should outsource.

Step 2 Marketplace
Which platform you choose will depend on the job role you’re looking to fill. There are many types of outsourcing companies: project-based; home-based; call centers; freelancers; etc. Our advice is to research each marketplace, confirm that the pricing works with your budget, look at the customer reviews, and then choose the platform that best fits your needs as a business owner.

At Virtual Coworker, our process is simple, transparent, and effective for all parties, ensuring an ideal & long-term fit for all. Based on the 40,000 candidates we have screened, our stellar Recruitment Team has a rigorous 3 step screening process before the candidate’s resume is forwarded to a client. Our screening process includes reference checking, confirming skill efficiency levels, and double checking home office capabilities. From that point, it is your responsibility to participate in the process and give feedback and/or let us know which candidate(s) you’d like to interview. This part of the process saves you the time of vetting them on your own, sorting through numerous resumes, and having to coordinate interview times.

Step 3 Interview
Conducting a video interview with your virtual candidate involves testing all technical capabilities and helps you select the right person for the job. We recommend the following interview questions, in addition to the usual basic interview questions, which allows you to zone in on the top assistants who are able to fulfill your specific needs, fit the energy of the company, and handle all job requirements.

Please tell me a little bit about your personal background. This is to glean a little understanding about the candidate as a human. What interests you about the role? This helps to discern that the virtual assistant understands the role and company. Please tell me about a difficult work situation and how you overcame it? This indicates how well they perform under pressure. Why did you leave past employers? This question gives you a good idea of the candidate’s ambition. Top virtual assistants will only leave for better opportunities and bigger challenges.

Make certain you are at least 90% confident that the candidate will be a good fit because what they want matches the mission and competencies of the role, as well as the culture of the company.

Step 4 Hire & Train
Congratulations on your new hire! Now is the time to introduce your eager new employee to your processes & procedures. Training is a vital part of a new job, the key to training remote staff is over-communication and patience. Everyone has the capability to learn but each person learns at a different pace and in different ways. We’ve found Google drive, Skype, and weekly meetings are extremely helpful in training new virtual staff as well as providing updates, feedback, discussing goals, and checking on project deadlines.

Following our epic guide will allow you to experience the power of hiring a top virtual assistant and integrating them properly into the operations of your business. A final gem of advice: Hire a truly great assistant who is right for *your* specific role and *your business’s* unique culture.

For more information, please download our Free eBook, written by Company founders, Braden & Kevin: How to Outsource Your Business to the Philippines

As the late great legend, Stan Lee, once penned back in 1962, “With great power, there must also come – great responsibility.” This is true of all great heroes & heroines, but here, in reality, it is also true. As an employer, you have a great responsibility to your vision, goals, and especially your employees. Without you, they would not have a job or be able to feed their families. You now have a great responsibility to get them trained, familiar & comfortable with their new workflow, up to speed, and set them up for success. This goes for local employees working in your office as well as your virtual staff members.

We’ve noticed a slight trend this year among entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses. They’re excited to hire a virtual assistant, happily start the resume/interview process, find someone perfect to hire, and then after only a week or two let them go for poor work quality, miscommunications, or not learning fast enough. With the help of some superheroes, we’ll tell the tale of the newly hired virtual assistant and their Employer, let’s call her Captain Courageous.

Spider-Man Training
New virtual assistants are a bit like young Spider-Man. They’re entering a world they’re not familiar with and need training. Training is a part of any new position. Even if you’re a genius, there are things to get accustomed to and learn because every company, manager, and boss are different. Training takes time with any new employee, sometimes months. When working with a new virtual assistant it’s important to be patient while training. Positive encouragement is important. Becoming impatient and ununderstanding only pushes away their work ethic and interest in working with you. It’s best to grow a role focusing on their strengths and skills.

Hulk Communication
The Hulk does not communicate beyond a word or two but his alter ego, Dr. Banner is a genius and very articulate. Communication is key with virtual assistants. Not only might there be a language barrier but there might also be a cultural barrier. Become familiar with your virtual staff member, get to know them as a human and understand their culture. Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc. are all free and available anytime for quick catchups, calls, meetings, and screen shares. Make certain to be very clear, specific, and professional in all communications.

Thor Workflow
Thor is the ultimate. He’s a God, but he didn’t start that way, he’s over 1000 years old. Remember that when you begin working with your virtual assistant. Begin with one task at a time and manage each task so your assistant begins to understand how your company runs and what type of workflow is expected. Another excellent way to aide your virtual staff’s learning process is to include them on team meetings. These are essential to creating a team and rapport with one another. Motivation, praise, and advice from fellow team members will do wonders for any employee. Delegate tasks accordingly as to not overwhelm your virtual assistant. They might say they understand but ask in several different ways to make sure. That can save both of you lots of time. Before you know it, your virtual assistant will be lightning fast, leading the way, and exceeding your expectations.

Whichever role you hired your virtual assistant to help you with, make sure you give them a chance to learn and process everything. New jobs can be nerve-racking, especially if your employer is in another country. Be patient, use clear & constant communication, and take advantage of the free global platforms that allow the sharing of ideas, documents, and programs. Use your “great power” for great managerial responsibility. Excelsior!

We’ve all done it. Right before an important decision or purchase, we scour the internet for information. These days everyone claims to have the correct answer. We even tend to trust strangers on the internet reviewing a product more than claims from a company themselves. With all the information out in the world, how do you decipher fact from fiction? Today, we’re going to debunk some of the most common mysteries about virtual assistants over the last few years and provide you with the truth once and for all.

Mystery #1 – Only large, fancy organizations need virtual assistants.
Incorrect. Back in the old days, the only firms that had work to delegate and enough money to afford virtual assistants were either enterprise-sized or monopoly companies. Not anymore. Small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs need help more than ever. They’re working against the clock to push their business into every arena. No matter what industry or size of an organization, virtual assistants have become a lifeline for companies. They take the repetitive and time-consuming tasks off the plate of busy business owners and allow them to focus on the big picture. Debunked!

Mystery #2 – Virtual assistant services are extremely expensive.
Wrong. When compared to the annual salary of a full-time employee, a virtual assistant is extremely cost-effective and a highly strategic move for your company. Virtual assistants have proven their worth over the past decade and usually save companies up to 80%. You can forego the costs of purchasing office equipment such as laptops, phones, and there is no commuting time to worry about as most virtual assistants work from the comfort of their own homes. The cost of a talented virtual assistant in the Philippines is between $6-$9 per hour and the quality of work is excellent. Debunked!

Mystery #3 – Training a virtual assistant takes too long.
A key element during the interview process is to make sure your job description is clear and specific. Once that’s done, make certain your virtual assistant has been accurately pre-screened, fully vetted, and has a good track record of success with your chosen virtual assistant company. Virtual Coworker’s chosen method of pre-screening candidates is a 3 step process which includes gathering important information such as confirming work at home capabilities, completion of a skill set form, reference checks, and video interviews. Once a candidate has passed all screenings then they’re ready to move on to Client interviews. This way we are 99.9% certain that our candidates have the correct skills to fast-track any training thrown their way and all the tools to succeed in their new job role. Debunked!

Mystery #4 – You can only delegate simple administrative tasks to virtual assistants.
False! Aside from physically running your errands, almost any business task can be outsourced. Virtual assistants today are more akin to freelancers than they’ve ever been before. The current top 5 most outsourced job roles are email marketing, publishing & graphic design, web development & social media marketing, search engine optimization, and accounting/bookkeeping. Debunked!

Mystery #5 – Virtual assistants cannot be trusted with confidential information.
Just as you wouldn’t give a new employee the business credit card number on their first day, you also have to build trust with your virtual assistant. This may seem daunting since you don’t have their physical presence in your office but never fear, there are many steps you can take to feel more secure with your virtual assistant. If they will be in charge of sensitive information, such as payroll, legal documents, medical records, or have access to documents containing social security numbers, for example, you can have them sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) upon hire. There are also applications like LastPass or OnePass that allow for secure transfers of information such as passwords. Virtual Coworker takes confidentiality very seriously. Our Contractor Agreements include confidentiality & intellectual property clauses and many of our Clients also have our virtual staff sign their own NDA’s. Debunked!

As with anything else, there are always some false truths out there surrounding virtual assistants. Just remember, virtual assistants can be utilized by a variety of organizations, they are cost-effective, quick learners who are easily managed, offer a wide variety of job roles, and can be trusted with sensitive information.

Hiring a dedicated virtual assistant is the perfect staffing solution for small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs who are focused on the bigger picture and working hard to build their organization. These heavy hitting professionals do not have time to keep up with hundreds of emails, endless to-do lists, IT issues, and the financial health of their company. How do they streamline their workflow and make the most out of every minute of every day? Simple. They outsource those job tasks to remote workers. Hiring a virtual assistant can be a highly strategic and valuable business move. Despite the fact that your virtual assistant might live on a completely different continent, they are an absolutely integral part of your team. Once you’ve hired and trained your new VA, they’ll provide you with more time to realize your ambitions and goals, not to mention time with your family. So how do you make certain your VA is working at their highest capacity and happy with you as an employer? Through years of experience as a successful outsourcing company, we’ve learned the top tools to effectively manage any virtual staff.

First, it’s important to flesh out a specific role/job description. Begin by pinpointing what tasks you’re spending too much time on and what you can outsource. These days almost anything can be outsourced, from Lead Generation Specialists to Human Resources, but most of the time it’s the highly prized skill set of an incredible multi-tasking executive assistant that a CEO requires. No matter what, hire for the role, not the tasks. Start the relationship off on the right page and be upfront and clear during the interview process.

Weekly catch ups and development/management chats are vital to make sure all items and tasks have been completed, questions answered, as well as addressing any learning curve mishaps. One of our not-so-secret weapons on this front is Google Drive. Shared documents are key! Having documents available to share and collectively update & maintain is a daily management tool to keep all players on track. It also aids in any miscommunication issues. Skype is another staple tool we love. It’s free, easy to use, available everywhere, and gives you the ability to see your virtual employee, screen share and train or share design ideas.

One thing we cannot stress enough is: your virtual assistant is not a robot. They’re human and need to feel appreciated for their efforts, hard work, and sometimes long hours. Building a relationship is the fun part of having an employee but it’s more important when that employee lives on the other side of the planet. Communication plays a big role here, always over communicate. We’re going to mention that one more time, communication. Build the relationship with trust, positive encouragement, creative incentives, and understand & appreciate cultural differences. Actively show interest in getting to know them as a human. Ask about their weekend, their family, what they like to do after work or what other interests they might have.

These essential management tools will go a long way toward creating a successful working relationship with not only your virtual assistant but all of your employees. At the same time, you’ll be able to use your time more efficiently which will, in turn, impact the future of your organization.

Many outsourcing countries have emerged during the past decade, but the Philippines still continues to dominate the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) arena. Why? The reasons are simple and clear: a high literacy rate with a dedicated workforce, English culture skills, low operational costs, and government support.

Currently, the literacy rate in the Philippines is 95% higher than India, China, and Sri Lanka. This is because Filipinos begin learning American English in the first grade. In India, by contrast, public schools introduce British English in the third grade. The English language is incorporated in the everyday life of Filipinos from product labels, traffic signs, and educational materials. Filipinos are also known for their neutral accent and knack of quickly imitating English accents, making the country more attractive to businesses.

Filipinos, particularly those who obtain degrees, are proficient in speaking, reading and writing English, and many are multilingual. Hard work, loyalty, and dedication are emphasized in the family-oriented Filipino culture, resulting in a work ethic not often found in modern society. These qualities are what make Filipinos the ideal contractors for any international employer.

Outsourcing is up to 80% less expensive than hiring locally in most cases. Not only that, the cost of living in the Philippines is substantially less than that in Canada, the US, and Australia, with wages being correspondingly lower as well. In 2018, full-time virtual employees make about $1,300 a month which stretches considerably further for a Filipino than it does for an American or an Australian. Working remotely for international employers is in very high demand in the Philippines, not only because of the wages received, but because this type of employment allows a Filipino to work from the comfort of their own home.

The government has been a key promoter of the outsourcing industry over the past decade. With the BPO industry expecting to add as many as 70,000 jobs and $1 billion in revenues this year, the government has increased their tax incentives. A couple of key incentives are income tax holidays, which are temporary reductions or eliminations of tax, and a 50% tax deduction. Permanent resident status is also readily available for investors. The Philippine Development Plan has listed the BPO industry as one of the top 10 high-potential and priority development areas. Due to that priority, special economic zones were created wherein BPO/contact center facilities may be established and operated.

Outsourcing to the Philippines makes sense and offers businesses all over the world the opportunity to grow their organization exponentially. The Philippines stands ready to offer every opportunity to investors, businesses, and employees in order to remain the leading global outsourcing hub all the while retooling its workforce to weather the shift to artificial intelligence.

Bogged down by repetitive tasks? Time poor? A great way to increase productivity is to outsource and focus on the things that matter.

Outsourcing can help change the way you work today and bring a breath of fresh air to your business.

Have you noticed how many hours a day you spend doing repetitive management tasks that don’t directly connect with your position or help you achieve your goals?

How many times have you failed to achieve your KPI, because you’ve had to spend hours on tedious data entry? Damn it! I can’t tell you how many times it’s happened to us!!

Today, thanks to technology and the amazing work of great teams, there is a solution: Outsourcing. It will ease your agenda, free you up to work on more important things, and help you to finally achieve your goals!

Which tasks can you outsource?

Here are some of the tasks you can successfully outsource:

Bookkeeping
Growing a business requires making multiple purchases, sales and payment. It takes a lot of time to record all these financial transactions and… you may not have the patience or the skills of an experienced accountant. With Virtual Coworker, you can find skilled people who will enjoy it and do it even better than you.

General Admin
You may not like to do these management tasks, but others do. Cleaning files, putting documents in the right order, making sure accounts are well balanced is a pleasure for the right person. Take these tasks off your plate and give it to people that enjoy it.

Data Entry
You are great at analysing data, but filling excel charts doesn’t exactly excite you. Why keep doing this task when you don’t really enjoy it? With outsourcing, you can find people who like to put everything in the right order and produce perfectly organised excel charts.

Social Media Management
With Virtual Coworker you can hire social media savvy staff, who can do things like scheduling social media posts and producing newsletters and press releases on all the various social media platforms. Outsourcing helps your business to have a better online presence.

Electronic Direct Mail
Your clients love to hear from you and you love to tell them about your latest exciting project. But facing the reality, editing a strong newsletter takes time…a lot of time…and most of us are time poor.

Invoice/payroll Management
It happens every month (or fortnight), requires your full attention and if it is not perfectly executed it may create serious problems for your business and for your suppliers and staff. So much stress! Why not outsource it to somebody who can offer their full attention to this important task?

Web Development
You might be a good manager, a good seller, a good accountant, a good leader, a good publicist. But you might not be a Web Developer. This requires strong technical skills, which take years to master. Virtual Coworker can introduce you to a host of professional web developers

To remain competitive you need to keep an eye on what is going on in your industry, but haven’t got the time to do it. With outsourcing, you can add another person to your team who is ready to conduct the necessary research.

At Virtual Coworker we are dedicated to helping you find reliable and long-term staff, which can be the answer to scaling up your business.

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Our day-to-day lives require us to complete tons of tasks in a small amount of time. This rings especially true in the life of a business owner. You get to your office, open your computer…. and BOOM! 92 unread emails and it’s barely 8AM. This is just the beginning of the countless things you need to get to before it’s time to (hopefully) clock out by 5PM for some much needed personal or family time. So how can you get everything done without completely losing your mind? Outsource!

Outsourcing, if done the right way, can save you tons of time which promotes growth. Chances are, your company doesn’t “specialize” in every department (i.e. human resources, accounting, IT management, etc.) and you can spend weeks looking for someone to fill these roles. Even once you’ve hired someone, the amount of time required to train them puts you even further behind. So now you’ve spent a ton of time and quite a bit of money on simply trying to find someone who can handle some of the more basic business services.

You’re back to square one.

This is why it can be useful to look to a company that specializes in outsourcing to streamline this process. These companies are able to pass go and quickly get you to the end result. They can source, prescreen, conduct reference checks, and set up interviews with the most qualified candidates for you. This candidate should already have the necessary skills to complete the tasks you’re looking to get off your plate. At the point of hire, you’ve managed to eliminate weeks of training and are ready to get started with the job at hand.

Also, when you outsource tasks to a specialist in the field, you are likely to get a quicker turnaround time. This person won’t be overwhelmed with more tasks than they can handle and since they don’t have a ton of distractions in an office, they are able to be more efficient. Your outsourced staff can be onto the next task in a matter of hours, as opposed to requiring days or weeks.

We’ve all heard some pretty concerning stories about outsourcing, but it’s the positive feedback that has you intrigued by the idea of offshore staff. So you might ask, “What is the difference between encountering a positive or negative experience with outsourcing?” There are a few mistakes you should avoid to ensure only the best experience.

Don’t look for candidates without professionals if you have never outsourced.

If you have never outsourced before, it can be quite difficult to know where to start. Make sure you work with a company that handles recruitment for you. That company will (hopefully) have a team of professionals who know exactly where to look for the perfect candidates to fill your role. If you start looking without help, you’ll surely end up wasting a lot of time and money on a process you shouldn’t have to conduct to begin with.

Don’t forget conduct a thorough interview

Just because your staff won’t be going into your office everyday, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to know them. Always interview through a video calling platform as you want to be sure the candidate is someone you can work with everyday. It’s difficult to get to know someone via email, so save yourself the time and headache of a drawn out interview process and video chat.

Don’t forget to give clear instructions

Providing clear instructions is essential to the success of any project. When working with staff offshores, it can be easy to assume that providing verbal instructions once, is enough. We often don’t realize how many times an in-house staff member walks into our office to clarify a question. Offshore staff don’t have the luxury of walking in and out of an office and they certainly don’t want to seem incompetent by asking TOO many questions. In order to make it easier on everyone, make sure you write out very specific instructions or screen share using a video-chat forum. Also, make yourself available for staff to ask you questions about a given task and be mindful of cultural differences. This will help your staff feel comfortable enough to speak up and ask questions. It’s better to get it right the first time.

Communicate regularly

To touch on my previous point, a lack of communication will almost guarantee offshore failure. Check in with your staff regularly, the same way you would a staff that you physically see everyday. Having an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality when outsourcing creates major miscommunication, which results in mistakes, inevitably costing you time and money to fix.

Make sure you collaborate efficiently

Working with a remote team can be just as effective as working in an office-based environment. One way to ensure success, is to utilize tools that are meant to make collaboration more simple. Some tools, such as Google Drive, allow remote staff to create and edit documents for projects that you can view and edit as well. The great thing about programs such as this, is that all files are centrally located, so they won’t get lost in your inbox.

We are all faced with those moments when we are completely and utterly overwhelmed with the never-ending tasks at work. So how do we fix this? Hiring an employee to come into the office everyday can be expensive and there is no way we can manage to get everything done all on our own. This is an opportunity where we can look to outsourcing, but this route can raise a concern. Allow me to ease your mind and provide you with a simple “how-to” when working with offshore staff.

One of the biggest concerns of offshore outsourcing is the possibility of losing managerial control. This does not have to be the case. Managing staff in-house is very similar to managing staff that you don’t see everyday. Virtual Coworker offers a unique Time Tracker System that all contractors are required to download, and where they are also required to log in at the beginning of every shift and log out when their shift has ended.

This software monitors your contractor’s activity in real time, by taking a screenshot of their desktop every 10 minutes. Another useful feature of this software is the Daily Report Email. Every 30 minutes, a pop-up will appear on the contractor’s screen where they must enter the tasks they are currently completing. At the end of each day, you will receive an email report with this information along with actual hours worked. With a software such as this, you won’t find yourself wondering what your contractor has been doing all day because it will all be neatly presented to you at the end of each day.

Think about it. When you meet with your team in the office at the beginning of a shift, you quickly discuss daily goals, maybe have a quick chat about who knows what, and then you all go to your desks with tasks in mind. You can have almost the exact same experience with your offshore staff member. Utilizing softwares such as Skype, you can video chat with your contractor, discuss daily goals, skip the “water-cooler” conversation, and quickly get to work (likely, with less distractions).

Deciding to use offshore outsourcing can initially be an intimidating experience, but if done properly and with the right assistance, it can be a cost-effective way to increase productivity in the office.

As technological capabilities evolve, companies with aspirations of success must evolve at a similar rate. If you are part of a midsized organization or have founded a low fund start-up, you are likely all too familiar with your resources being overwhelmed by admin tasks. It is because of this that more companies are looking to outsourcing their work in order to cut overhead costs. Cutting costs permits the growth of your business, and one of the best ways to do so is to invest in virtual assistants in the Philippines.

There are a multitude of ways in which using Philippine-based virtual assistants allows your business to grow.

1. Realigning Your Budget

The most prominent benefit you will discover when investing in a virtual assistant is the reduction of spending. The cost of hiring a virtual assistant in the Philippines is significantly less than that of an employee in the US, allowing you space to allocate those funds elsewhere.

2. Organizing Your Business

As your business grows, you may find yourself struggling to find the resources to pick up the increased workload, which can inevitably leave your employees feeling tired, unmotivated, and unorganized. Virtual assistants can relieve some of this burden, being that their schedules can be adjusted to fit your needs. In addition to getting organized, these assistants possess a guaranteed level of experience and competency that your current employees may lack.

3. Delegating Tasks

Depending on your needs, virtual assistants can handle the mundane business tasks that you, or your employees, simply do not have time to complete. This includes phone calls, filing and filtering emails, managing calendars and social media, setting appointments, and even bookkeeping.

4. Using Specialists

Contrary to popular belief, virtual assistants can do much more than secretarial work. Specialist virtual assistance can offer advanced skills in areas such as digital marketing, blogging, SEO, and even software development. There is a specialized virtual assistant to suit your every need.

5. Gaining a Partner

There is a common misconception that you cannot form the same relationship that you can with an in-house employee, but this is simply not the case. Virtual assistants are not robots! You can invite them to offer ideas and possibly even invite them to join the business in a more committed role.

Virtual assistants are revolutionizing the way companies are conducting their businesses. More than just a hired hand, a virtual assistant can lift some weight off of your shoulders so that you can breathe again.

Outsourcing has become a huge benefit to many companies in Australia and other parts of the world. Its benefits are undisputed and the results tend to speak for themselves. Still, not every business chooses to outsource for some of its positions, but those who don’t are really missing out. Of all the areas in the world, the Philippines has become one of the premier spots to find excellent outsourced workers, and it looks to remain that way in 2016. Whether it’s virtual assistants you’re looking for, or perhaps web developers, sales assistants, or customer support personnel, outsourcing from the Philippines is a great way to find exactly what your business needs. Here, we’ll look at five reasons it’s the way to go in this New Year.

1. The time zone is great

For Australian clients, hiring Filipino virtual assistants is an excellent move in terms of work schedule. The Philippines is on the same time zone as Western Australia which puts them just one or two hours behind QLD and 2 or 3 hours behind NSW depending on daylight savings. This makes it easy for you to train, manage and maintain contact with your outsourced workers during business hours.

2. The people have excellent skills

The Philippines is known to have a high literacy rate, and on top of that, most Filipinos also speak English as it’s taught in school starting in kindergarten, as is their native language. They also have the ability to hone their vocal skills so that they have a good, neutral accent, which helps a great deal when working for American and Australian clients. Also, it’s not difficult to find a diverse skill set, with some Filipinos having great IT and programming experience while others have strengths in finance, HR, content creation, or customer service.

3. Your business can grow more

Often times, for a business to grow, many things have to fall into place. You need to make sales and build a great team to facilitate growth, but often you also have to handle the mundane tasks as well. By outsourcing these time consuming jobs to virtual assistants in the Philippines – who can handle them quite well – you give yourself more hours to focus on the highest value activities, which helps your business grow faster.

4. The talent pool is large

The Philippines has a population somewhere around 100 million, many of whom are young and can greatly contribute to the workforce. There are around 450,000 students graduating from university each year, which ranks the Philippines third overall in terms of talent pool size coming in just behind India and China. In 2014, only about 1% of the total population, or about 1 million people, worked in the BPO or outsourcing industry. In 2016, this is expected to see an exponential increase with as many as 1.5 million new jobs being generated.

5. You can lower costs without compromising quality

Virtual Assistants in the Philippines are usually very hard working and will provide excellent service for whatever position they’re placed in. Also, the cost of living is far lower than in countries like Australia and the US. This means that a Filipino virtual assistant makes roughly 20% of what someone in a more developed country would earn. This makes it much more cost effective for companies to outsource because they can pay a lower rate which will still be a good amount for the Filipino virtual assistants to earn and support their families.

In my time at Virtual Coworker, I’ve seen countless numbers of companies successfully hire staff in the Philippines. This can range from the mom and pop shop who hired a part-time admin assistant, to the ASX listed company who hired 20 customer and tech support staff. When outsourcing works, it’s amazing. The ability to hire skilled labour at a fraction of the cost of local staff unequivocally puts companies in a better position to scale fast… and affordably.

Inevitably, it doesn’t always work. In recruitment, whether it be offshore or onshore, the success rate will never be 100%. There are too many tangible and intangible factors that go into hiring someone, which can be very hard to uncover before the new hire actually starts working.

There are plenty of reasons why new hires don’t work out, but one reason I rarely hear business owners or managers admit, is that it’s their fault the relationship failed.

When hiring a new team member, it’s extremely important to have a smooth and refined training process, procedures well documented, and a plan to delegate and manage the workload being assigned. This is doubly important when hiring offshore, yet seems to be given half the effort.

When managers fire staff, the majority of the time they blame it on lack of skill-set, initiative, and ability to follow instructions. However, in the majority of exit interviews we do, staff blame it on the client not providing proper training, lack of internal processes, and failing to provide the support every new hire needs.

So, which is it? Regardless of individual outcomes, business owners need to treat offshore hires with the same regard and attention as onshore hires. They need to have a solid plan to integrate this “virtual” worker into their local team and train them on company procedures and processes. Often, they need to over communicate in the beginning and really put effort into building the trust remote working relationships need.

Anyone who has built teams can tell you that even if you do all the right things, it still sometimes will not work out. However, by creating replicable processes and procedures, and putting maximum effort into making it succeed, then if it does fail, at least you know where the problem lies and how to fix it next time.

In the age of technology, more and more offices are globally diversifying and moving away from the
traditional bricks-and-mortar place of work. What this means is that we need to be flexible to collaborate with coworkers, customers and clients and manage outsourcing in an efficient and pragmatic way. These eight tips will make it easier to work with a variety of colleagues or assistants offshore, and maximise your relationships and capabilities.

1. Encourage questioning

If you create an environment where your assistant feels like he/she can ask you questions, you are far more likely to succeed! Asking (and answering) one simple question can completely change the landscape of a project and affect the outcome. If your assistant is unsure of something, make sure he/she is comfortable asking – you’ll save tones of time and build rapport in the process.

2. Nurture the relationship

To build trust and a solid relationship, make sure you both feel like you are working towards a common goal. Try and learn some personal details; enquire about their kids, their hobbies, what makes them tick. Having something of a personal connection will open things up, and improve your working dynamic too. This is especially true with Filipino staff, as the Philippines is a family first culture so making your virtual assistant feel like part of your companies “family” goes a long way.

3. Understand cultural differences

Understanding someone’s background and culture is more than just learning about where they come from. It’s about knowing what drives and motivates them, how they best learn, their tendencies, and how they work within a team. All of these cultural differences, especially between western and Asian countries, are amplified when working with someone remotely. By better understanding

4. Delegate and share responsibility

The whole point of having an assistant is being able to share the workload, so make sure you have a good system in place for them to make your life easier! Once you’ve decided who will complete which tasks, have regular check-ins. Make sure your assistant is on top of all your deadlines and understands the implications of failure.

5. Be realistic

Before deciding how to delegate tasks, test your assistant’s capabilities. Have him or her work on several things for you to determine where his/her expertise lies and where the knowledge gaps are. Be realistic on what can be accomplished and should be expected by each individual VA.

6. Use appropriate tools

In order to exchange information and share thoughts across vast distances, it is vital that you have solid technological systems in place. In particular, having a great CRM or similar database will be vital – it will allow you to exchange notes and keep up-to-date regardless of time zones or other technological capabilities.

7. Communicate effectively

Simple things such as syncing calendars and diaries so that all members of a global team are aware of appointments can make all the difference! Working in different languages and different cultural perspectives can complicate communication, so try to be succinct in your approach. Bullet point and list format will help here.

8. Give written instructions

While phone conversations are great, and should be done regularly, putting things in writing eliminates confusion and provides a document to consult along the way should there be any confusion. For example, if you require a piece of work completed by a certain deadline, make sure that you record this in writing and share with the other party – and pop a reminder in his/her diary!

The benefits of outsourcing particular tasks and positions within a business are indisputable, however, some business owners still choose to be sceptical. Whether it’s virtual assistants you’re looking for, or perhaps web developers, sales assistants, or customer support personnel, outsourcing from the Philippines is a great way to find exactly what your business needs. Here, we’ll look at five reasons why the Philippines is the place to be, and the types of roles we see outsourced most often at Virtual Coworker.

So, what’s all the fuss about outsourcing to the Philippines?

The time zone is great

The people have excellent skills

Your business can grow more</stron

Often times, for a business to grow, many things have to fall into place. You need to make sales and build a great team to facilitate growth, but often you also have to handle the mundane tasks as well. By outsourcing these time consuming jobs to virtual assistants in the Philippines – who can handle them quite well – you give yourself more hours to focus on the highest value activities, which helps your business grow faster.

The talent pool is large

You can lower costs without compromising quality

Top 10 areas SME’s globally are off-shoring:

1. Bookkeeping
This can be one of the most time consuming tasks within any business, so why not have someone else keep your books up-to-date? A virtual assistant will be able to easily and automatically manage your billing and invoicing, bank reconciliations, refunds, debt collections, financial reporting and BAS statements, through cloud based app solutions like Xero.

2. Market research
This is important to the success of any business, no matter what size. Outsourcing research to a virtual assistant will help you to find objective and relevant information, analyse said information, and deliver the results in a clear format. This is a critical component to generating leads and can greatly increase the productivity of your sales team.

3. Administration
Your virtual assistant will help you undertake any basic administration tasks, including managing your calendars, scheduling appointments with clients on your behalf, capturing and responding to messages, and writing letters and
memos.

4. Customer support
Outsourcing customer support is a cost-effective solution, providing flexibility across different shifts and time zones, which can be invaluable for individual businesses that do not have the same resources as a large company. Providing technical and administrative support, and a range of email, phones, and live chat support on demand is critical. Your customer support can be outsourced to a virtual assistant with excellent communication skills and years of experience.

5. Web development
Through offering remote online management tools, outsourcing your web development to an experienced virtual team will allow you to focus on other elements of your business. The interview process to find a web developer suitable to your needs is undertaken, including a thorough screening process, coding tests, and design tests, with any further interviewing that you may require done through Skype.

6. Content writing
Getting the right message to your target audience is important and takes time when formulating the right words in an effective way to achieve cut-through. Have some or all of your content written for you – from web material and newsletters, to blogs, brochures and presentations – with an experienced virtual writer.

7. Sales Assistance
Managing the sales process is vital in terms of attracting and retaining clients. A virtual assistant will save you time by managing sales leads and CRM, giving you more time to focus on generating additional leads and translating those leads into sales. Provide a virtual sales assistant to your current business development team and witness how many more calls and meetings they’re able to attend.

8. Data entry
This is a basic task that can take up valuable business time. Have your data entered into a format that will allow you to access information in an easy and organised way, allowing you to get the most out of your data. Tasks such as this are so easy to delegate, can easily be done virtually, and are too menial for senior managers to be doing.

9. Email management
Answering emails cannot only be a mundane task, it can also be time consuming and distracting. Consider what you could be doing in that time instead of reading and sorting through your mail. A virtual assistant can help to organise, sort, create folders, file, and manage priority mail on a daily basis.

10. Social media
With social media becoming one of the most common ways to network and communicate, it is an invaluable tool for business growth. It is therefore important to ensure frequent research, communication, and management of your social media platforms is undertaken. Utilise a virtual assistant to save you time by managing your social media daily, researching market trends, and managing ongoing messaging and communication to your followers and
prospective clients.

Virtual Coworker provides a range of convenient, easy and cost effective services, and world-class management through time-tracking software, allowing individual businesses more time to focus on business strategy and clients. Click here to contact our sales office today for a free job consultation.

Crew Scout is an online marketplace for on ¬demand video production and video crew services. Its purpose is to cut through the noise of the video production industry by enabling businesses to find and hire vetted video production companies and freelancers for their next video campaign. With their platform, you can post a project in minutes to hundreds of our pre-¬vetted video makers around Australia to create anything from animated explainer videos, branded video content, client testimonials, live event coverage & how¬ to videos.

Below are questions I asked their Founder, Paul Moses, on how his experience has been using Virtual Coworker.

What type of position have you hired through Virtual Coworker?

We hired a full time PHP developer to develop the backend for our marketplace.

What was the recruitment process like?

The recruitment process was very smooth, it was great having someone in Sydney to talk to and seek advice from when initially searching for the ideal candidate. We had an initial interview over Skype with our developer who was very professional with pretty good English. We interviewed a few more candidates and then hired our favourite. Allan started the following Monday and has been with us for 6 months now.

How does hiring someone who is working virtually differ from hiring someone locally?

There is the obvious one in that they are not with you and the rest of the team here in Sydney. Having Allan on video Skype when we are working through some website specific strategies reduces the remote feeling quite a lot. Also, because the Philippines is a similar time-zone, Allan can start work more or less the same time as us which has made scheduling meetings or urgent request so much easier!

When hiring remotely we look for people who can work for themselves and be organised enough to meet deadlines even though they are away from the rest of the team. There was a certain leap of faith involved and you do need to show trust but we have found that doing this has worked out in our favour.

If you can’t trust your team to work remotely, you shouldn’t be hiring them!

What processes have you put in place to most effectively work with your VC?

I am Allan’s main point of contact and we talk a lot on Skype. He starts at 10am so we usually have a few minutes in the morning to talk about what he is up to for the day and the goals for the day / week.

We also have a Skype video chat at least once a week to see where we are with the tasks on a more high level. We have made it a point to include Allan in team meetings as much as possible and when appropriate, he needs to know the general goals of the business as much as we do.

For project management we use Asana to send files, mock-up graphics of the platform etc. Asana is free for basic projects which we find is more than enough for our needs.

How has Virtual Coworker helped you start your Video Production marketplace?

It has helped us so much, being a startup where we had 8 months of website development before we were earning revenue took it’s toll financially but hiring a developer through Virtual Coworker really helped to soften the blow. If we had our platform built in Australia it would have cost around $75k, which we wouldn’t have been able to afford. Crew Scout is up and running and built well for a fraction of that cost all thanks to Virtual Coworker!

If your business is interested in a marketing video, go and check out Crew Scout! For Virtual Coworker subscribers, they are doing a free premium project bonus which is where their in-house producers can help you shortlist the best video professionals for your particular project based on their knowledge of their skills, location and experience. Just enter PREMPRO when posting your project.

Outsourcing as a concept is nothing new. What is new, however, is the ability for small and medium sized businesses to start and grow offshore teams instantly. What used to be reserved for only the big end of town is now available to everyone due to technology and a better educated global workforce. With workers from all over the world accessible, why are so many companies choosing to set up shop in the Philippines?

Below are the top 5 reasons companies are outsourcing THERE.

Time zone: Being in the same time-zone as Perth, which is currently two hours behind, is hugely advantageous to APAC companies. This allows companies to hire staff able and willing to work the local hours of the business. If the goal is to hire someone long-term, and make them a valued team member, this is absolutely crucial! Having your offshore team work the same schedule as the local team will make continual training and management easier, improve communication, enhance internal relationships, and ultimately get you better ROI. This isn’t as critical for freelance projects and short-term work, but still makes those easier as well.

Hard Working: For many in the Philippines, having a stable job is not guaranteed, so when they find a suitable long-term opportunity with a good company, they feel a sense of loyalty and prove themselves with great work ethic. This is especially true with home-based staff as they take advantage of the opportunity to work from home AND not having to travel 3 hours through traffic to every day.

Educated: The Philippines is developing at a rapid rate. The population is about 4x Australia and there are around 500,000 new university graduates per year. The majority of large companies who offshore are hiring white collar jobs in the Philippines. In addition to corporate training, the ease of which working online has become the past five or so years has given a lot of these workers a uniquely broad skill-set.

Rates: There’s no denying most people’s number one reason for looking offshore is the hourly rate discrepancy between places like Australia and the Philippines. You can find highly skilled people for a fraction of what you would pay locally. The great thing is that the rates are affordable to us, but good for the staff working in the Philippines. Minimum wages is around AUD$ 1.50 per hour depending on the region, so virtual assistants making 4x or 5x more than their minimum wage would be like someone in Australia earning 70-80 dollars per hour.

English: The English level of workers is one of the more attractive reasons companies build their teams in the Philippines. Due to the American cultural impact, English is a prominent language spoken throughout Filipino households and primary schooling. In addition to written and spoken English, most Filipinos are comfortable conversing with international clients where English is their first language.

To celebrate the new financial year in Australia, Virtual Coworker is holding a contest that will give the winner one free month of virtual assistant services.

The process is simple. Fill out the form below telling us why your company desperately needs a Virtual Assistant. Our judges will choose the entry that seems to need a long-term team member from the Philippines the most!

The contest will last through July and a winner will be picked the first week of August. There will also be some cheeky prizes for 2^nd and 3^rd place!

Looking forward to seeing your entry!
Virtual Coworker Team

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Virtual assistants make work easier – and all over the world tens of thousands of companies and organisations are outsourcing jobs to highly skilled VAs working overseas.

There are many great advantages. You can clear away difficult or time consuming tasks like spreadsheets or bookkeeping from your in-tray and create space to concentrate on the truly important things.

But when you have a local team and a virtual assistant, it can sometimes be hard to combine them – with one set of workers in the room with you while the other is on the other side of the world!

So how can you best assimilate them?

At Virtual Coworker, we specialise in outsourcing to the Philippines and over the years we’ve seen time and again that the best way forward is all about communication…

Get your local team on board

First of all, when using any form of virtual assistant, it definitely pays to thoroughly inform your local team about them – about what the VA is doing, responsible for, and can help them with.

Essentially, a virtual assistant is business tool, one that adds value, flexibility and speed to your organisation. They are there for you and your local team to benefit from, so tell your workers about the good things a VA can do for the business.

This way, your local team will get behind using a virtual assistant and could even come up with some more ways to work together, creating better outcomes for your business.

Clearly communicate your values and goals

With your local team’s support in place; it’s vital that you make the virtual assistant fully aware of your organisation’s goals.

Many businesses and groups have key values, aims and attitudes, and your VA will be able to help you achieve these if they are brought into the fold. This way, the work they do will hit the mark every time and show the local team their true value, bringing both sides closer together.

A virtual assistant can be so much more than someone who simply does a series of tasks – arm them with knowledge and passion for your goals and they will exceed your expectations!

Make them part of the family

The best businesses are like happy families – everyone is focused on the same goals and supporting each other to achieve them.

When you hire a virtual assistant, you can achieve the best results by making them a part of your business’s family.

You can hold regular phone calls with them, Skype sessions or Google hangouts. Talk about business and life at the same time and grow a stronger bond that will reap great dividends.

You could even nominate a person from your local team to act as the liaison for their needs, with you keeping tabs through a direct report.

Successfully assimilating your local team with a virtual assistant is an important step in getting the best results from outsourcing. So remember, it’s all about communication – bring everyone onto the same page and the sky is the limit.

Outsourcing to virtual assistants in the Philippines certainly has its benefits and businesses are moving in this direction to reap some of these. However, there are situations when outsourcing to a virtual assistant is not beneficial, particularly if the business does not have an adequate plan in place to support this type of arrangement.

If one of the following 5 warning signs applies to you, go back to the drawing board before you hire a virtual assistant.

Inadequate processesVirtual assistants are generally driven by processes – both for time efficiency and to accommodate for the absence of face-to-face contact. Without pre-determined processes within the organisation, it is near impossible to hand work over to a virtual assistant and have it completed in a timely and accurate manner.In addition, processes are required to manage staff, regardless of whether they are virtual or not. However, managing staff virtually comes with a set of different challenges so if the organisation does not have adequate processes in place to do this, the benefits of hiring virtual staff will not be optimised.
2. No strategy

If it is not understood from within the organisation what is needed, it is impossible to outwardly direct a virtual assistant on what is required. This not only includes overall strategy for the role, but also should incorporate a clearly defined set of daily, or short-term tasks in order to provide a roadmap for reaching goals

Direction needs to be set from clear objectives and communicated effectively to the virtual assistant. Unless the assistant is clear on and believes in the organisation’s strategy, it is not beneficial to hire them.

3. No capacity to manage someone

A common misconception when hiring a virtual assistant is that once they are hired, the job from the company’s perspective is done and no further management is required. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As with staff that work for the company face-to-face, there is a requirement for someone within the organisation to manage them and ensure that targets are being met in line with the organisation’s strategy. In addition, there is a need to have someone from within the organisation manage the virtual staff member to ensure that this individual is capable of managing the assigned work and workload. If this isn’t possible, hiring them would not prove beneficial.

4. Reliance on one person

When hiring a virtual assistant, the company is relying on this one staff member to undertake the work in line with the company’s requirements. Unless the company has set realistic goals about the amount of work the assistant would be able to complete, the organisation may not get what is required out of the arrangement and a virtual assistant would therefore not be an ideal solution.

In addition, relying on one virtual staff member limits the ability for information sharing and accessing a range of skills. Therefore, if the organisation was put in a position where the virtual assistant was no longer available, this information may be lost. Furthermore, if the project requires a range of skills, one virtual assistant may not be suitable.

5. Unrealistic expectations

Hiring a virtual assistant can become a problem if and when the company holds unrealistic expectations within role requirements. For example, it is unrealistic for a company to hire one assistant that can enforce major changes in the business, or engage in a wide range of unrelated tasks requiring different skill sets including bookkeeping to graphic design.

For more information on outsourcing virtual assistants, visit virtualcoworker.com.au or call 1300 886 740 in Australia.

Organisations work hard to achieve goals through efficiency of time, outputs, resources and costs.

Outsourcing to virtual assistants provides many benefits to assist organisations to achieve these goals,
however it can be limiting when hiring project-based virtual assistants, as they are generally more taskoriented rather than focusing on the businesses’ long-term strategic goals.

Hiring a long-term virtual assistant gives organisations the convenience and efficiencies of virtual
assistants, however also provides the below benefits including better results, relationship building,
understanding the organisation processes, empowerment, and improved customer service, to increase
revenue and retain customers.

1. Better results through efficiency

Hiring long-term virtual assistants rather than project-based assistants increase efficiency through business outputs, resourcing and costs.

Outsourcing to a virtual assistant long-term rather than outsourcing by project gives business managers
time to focus on developing the long-term strategy to generate revenue and customer retention rather than focusing on the micro elements of the business.

In addition, long-term virtual assistants can contribute external expertise, research, and a range of skill-sets that may not already be present within the business. This contribution can save the business time on
implementing additional research, training, and other specialised foundations.

The provision of external resourcing in addition to the reduction in ongoing training and repetitive costs
associated with project-based assistants reduces ongoing business costs, which can be invested in other
revenue-generating areas of the business.

2. Relationship building

“Among the keys to getting outsourcing to deliver is developing a solid relationship with your [virtual
assistant]. In fact, this may be the most critical factor in long-term outsourcing success.” (Source:
customerthink.com).

Hiring virtual assistants over the long-term rather than hiring by project gives the business an opportunity
to build a stronger relationship with the assistant by understanding their skill-sets, knowledge and best
attributes to leverage best outcomes for the business.

3. Understanding the processes

Another benefit of hiring a long-term virtual assistant rather than a project-based assistant is that the
process only requires explanation once rather than by each project.

Long-term familiarity with business processes not only assists the business to focus on overall productivity rather than using the time to re-explain the processes, it also lends itself to additional improvements where the virtual assistant can use the time to introduce improved processes based on external experience and perspectives.

4. They feel part of the business

Project-based assistants are shorter sighted and view the business only as far as the specific project, rather than the business as a whole.

The advantage of hiring a long-term virtual assistant is that they have time to start feeling part of the
business and to become familiar with the overall vision and goals of the business. This enables the longterm assistant to align their work and outputs with the business goals and long-term business plan.

5. Empowerment

The next step from feeling part of the business is feeling empowered through a longer term relationship
with the business.

Through a long-term arrangement, the assistant has the ability to build trust within the organisation and as a result the business can empower the assistant to take ownership and move into more of a ‘consultative’ role.

6. Customer service

Hiring long-term virtual assistants gives both suppliers and customers time to familiarise and build
relationships with the assistant, naturally resulting in improved customer service engagement and customer retention.

Virtual Coworker attracts high quality long-term virtual assistants. For more information on the benefits of
long-term virtual assistants and managing offshore staff, visit virtualcoworker.com.au or call 1300
886 740 in Australia.

As online and digital facilities continue to improve, the ability to hire virtual assistants is becoming more convenient for organisations. As a result, there is an increasing demand for outsourcing to the Philippines. This is for a number of reasons, including:

• Reduction of overhead costs as a result of lower salary expectations; reduction in office space required and therefore rent payable; and minimal utilities and office supplies expenses.

• The culture in the Philippines is not dissimilar to the culture within western countries. They are therefore found to be more culturally compatible when compared to places like India and China.

• They are a convenient resource to rely on as business demands increase.

However, it is vital that organisations do not overlook or underestimate the importance of training and
ongoing management for virtual assistants. Rather, it is important that it is seen as an investment into the
business.

Despite the work being outsourced remotely, the principles of training and management remain the same, and the process to train and manage virtual assistants is just as important. Here’s why:

To ensure accuracy and consistency of information throughout the team
Consistent information and processes embedded across the team ensures that all staff have the same clear direction and understanding of the expectations. In addition, it ensures accuracy of information communicated about the company, clients, and projects regardless of their location.

To ensure efficiency of processes across all staff
Providing the team with clear and well-defined processes ensures that the virtual assistant has the tools to undertake tasks systematically, resulting in higher efficiency.

Geographical distance can compromise knowledge sharing
When managing a team face-to-face rather than virtually, there is the benefit of ‘on-the-job’ training, as well as knowledge sharing within the team. However, training and managing staff offshore limits the ability to do this, which re-emphasises the importance of implementing a strong process for training and management.

To provide long-term training efficiency
When time is invested to develop well-thought out training processes, these processes can be replicated moving forward for new and existing staff, with less time and effort. So, what needs to be considered when developing strong training and management processes for Philippines Virtual Assistants? The tips below provide a good starting point for developing the process:

1) Identify key knowledge gaps
The first consideration when putting together any process for training your virtual assistant is to understand the knowledge gaps of each staff member. These knowledge gaps will drive the direction that the training processes need to take, and the objectives that need to be achieved from these processes. Different knowledge gaps may mean different training processes to be adapted to different individual learning needs.

2) Identify clear tasks
In addition to knowledge gaps, training processes are built around the required tasks that virtual assistants will be undertaking. These processes include specific project tasks, as well as company processes around due diligence, including having work signed off prior to submission to the client. Tasks can be driven and managed with the implementation of task-orientated Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), work-in-progress meetings, and follow up feedback.

3) Keep it simple
When putting together training processes, it’s always best to keep it simple and precise to avoid any ambiguity. When training virtual assistants where English is not their first language, additional information within the process will lead to confusion and may overwhelm staff with unnecessary information. After all, this process is about driving efficiency and effectiveness, so simplicity is always best.

4) Repetition and ongoing management
Successful learning from training relies on ongoing management and repetition. Identify the learning gaps, outline the tasks required to be undertaken to close these gaps, repeat the information until it becomes second-nature, and then follow up where required to reinforce the learning.

5) Training materials
Have an up-to-date copy of training materials and processes readily available to virtual assistants so they can be referred to as required. These materials will aid in the self-learning process in the absence of on-site collaboration and knowledge sharing.

1. The time zone is great

2. The people have excellent skills

4. The talent pool is large

5. You can lower costs without compromising quality

Solar companies in Australia and abroad are dealing with increasing overheads at a time when demand is rising steadily. There are solutions available to support SME’s to do more with less; one of which is outsourcing. Outsourcing has been something that has, at times, had negative connotations attached to it, but the high quality and reliable work of companies such as Virtual Coworker has gone a long way to improving the perception and the efficacy of outsourcing as a realistic option.

What is outsourcing?

In a nutshell, outsourcing is the process by which tasks that have traditionally been provided in house are contracted to an outside company or worker with particular expertise in providing that service. Essentially, if your business is lacking knowledge or experience in a certain area, or if you have specialised staff performing a large number of tasks outside their area of specialty, outsourcing could be a fantastic resource.

How can Solar Companies benefit from outsourcing?

The most commonly identified benefit for Solar Companies in using outsourcing is around cost savings. Outsourcing data entry through Virtual Coworker, for example, could cost you as little as 7 AUD/hr, whereas a local specialist could cost around four times that amount.

Another significant benefit is the improvement to working conditions for existing staff. If you have training or marketing staff, you obviously want them to be spending their time and focus on delivering training or marketing. We all know, however, that these staff often have to devote a significant portion of their time to administrative functions that support core business, rather than delivering the actual core business. This is not only a waste of valuable resources, but can also lead to job dissatisfaction. Outsourcing some of the administrative and famously boring tasks can therefore be a win-win situation.

So, what can be outsourced?

Identifying the right things to outsource is of crucial importance to ensure that you are saving money without compromising the quality of the service delivery. These are some of the most popular roles Solar Companies are outsourcing:

1) Bookkeeping and accounts

From $7 per hour, you can hire a bookkeeper, accounts receivable, or accounts payable worker from the Philippines. Our candidates will have experience in Xero, MYOB, Quickbooks and Australian accounting methods.

2) Market research

This is important to the success of any business, no matter what size. Outsourcing research to a virtual assistant will help you to find objective and relevant information, analyse said information, and deliver the results in a clear format. This and also help your sales and marketing team identify new markets and prospective sales leads.

3) Administration

Imagine all of the menial tasks you and your team do every single day. There is no reason you should be doing them yourself when you can get someone just as good for a fraction of what your time is worth! Think about delegating calendar management, scheduling appointments, researching flights and more.

4) Sales assistance

Managing leads, clients and milestones is critical to selling but can be extremely time consuming. A virtual assistant will save you time by managing new sales leads and your customer relationship management system, giving you more time to focus on generating additional leads and translating those leads into sales. Hire virtual sales assistants to help your current business development team maximize their time; which will lead to more client meetings and ultimately sales.

5) Data entry

Almost every business has some form of data entry component. It’s basic, process driven work that is one of the best tasks to outsource to a virtual assistant from the Philippines.

6) Email management

Sorting through emails throughout the day is a mundane and time-consuming task. A virtual assistant can help to organise, sort, create folders, file, delete spam and manage priority mail on a daily basis.

7) Social media

Hiring a virtual assistant to help with social media could end up proving invaluable. The best way to utilise them is to help out with postings, responding to comments, and scheduling posts.

How do your ensure outsourcing will be a success?

If you are interested in investigating outsourcing further, there are a number of things to consider ensuring that it will work well for your specific situation.

Identify exactly what you need

It’s critical to have a crystal clear of the job or position you are looking to outsource. If you go through the process of finding staff with a vague idea of what exactly you need, odds are you won’t the perfect fit.

Go out and find really good people

If you’re after short-term or freelance workers, there are a number of websites you can go to hire people directly for small projects. If you are after more of a long-term team member, companies like Virtual Coworker who handle all of the recruitment, HR and payroll are probably your best bet. Regardless of the route you choose, make sure you conduct video interviews, test their Internet, and ensure the person communicates well and seems dedicated and reliable.

Treat and manage the worker like any local staff

Making someone feel like part of the team goes a long way for motivation and productivity. Also, be especially detailed and clear in the instructions you give to your workers, as it’s easy for things to get lost in translation when working with virtual staff.

Outsourcing can make for a happier workforce and significant cost savings, ensuring the focus remains on your core activities and that you have the right staff doing the right job. Managed correctly, outsourcing can play a large role in the future success of Solar Companies throughout Australia.

If you’re interested to speak with an Australian representative on how this can work for your company, click here.

Building offshore teams used to be routine for only companies at the big end of town. Not anymore. In today’s business landscape, small to medium sized businesses are in a great position to take advantage of the cost-savings and productivity that comes with building an offshore workforce.

For companies in Australia, there is no place more attractive for virtual workers than the Philippines. With over 100 million people, the Philippines is becoming a hotbed of talent for international companies to choose from. There are four main reasons why it is so advantageous for Australian companies to outsource to the Philippines.

Time zone

The Philippines is in the same time zone as Western Australia. When building an offshore team, time zone is a critical component as it’s very hard to integrate someone into your team, from a cultural and work productivity standpoint.

English skills

The people of the Philippines are well known for their English skills. Due to the American and western influence, most Filipinos start learning English in school from a very young age. It’s not farfetched to get staff who speak nearly perfect English with a very neutral accent.

Cost-savings

Typically, home-based staff and virtual assistants in the Philippines are up to 80% less than local resources. Cost of living is so low that it has kept hourly rates down.

Highly skilled labour

Just because you’re paying a fraction doesn’t mean you should expect a fraction of the productivity or effectiveness a local worker could provide. There are around 500,000 new university graduates per year in the Philippines; many who work for international companies upon completion.

So, what can you use a virtual assistant for? Below are the top 10 areas Australian companies are currently employing staff in the Philippines.

1) Bookkeeping and accounts

2) Market research

3) Administration

4) Customer and technical support

Outsourcing customer support is a cost-effective solution, providing flexibility across different shifts and time zones, which can be invaluable for individual businesses that do not have the same resources as a large company. Providing technical and administrative support, and a range of email, phones, and live chat support on demand is critical. Your customer support can be outsourced to a virtual assistant with excellent communication skills and years of experience.

5) Web development and graphic design

With remote project management tools and cloud-based systems, it’s easier than ever to employ technical staff offshore. Consider adding web developers, systems admin, or design staff to your local team.

6) Content writing

Getting the right message to your target audience is important and takes time when formulating the right words in an effective way to achieve cut-through. Have some or all of your content written for you – from web material and newsletters, to blogs, brochures and presentations – with an experienced virtual writer.

7) Sales assistance

Managing leads, clients and milestones is critical to selling but can be extremely time consuming. A virtual assistant will save you time by managing new sales leads and your customer relationship management system, giving you more time to focus on generating additional leads and translating those leads into sales. Hire virtual sales workers to help your current business development team maximize their time; which will lead to more client meetings and ultimately sales.

8) Data entry

Almost every business has some form of data entry component. It’s basic, process driven work that is one of the best tasks to outsource to a virtual assistant from the Philippines.

9) Email management

10 Social media

Hiring a virtual assistant to help with social media could end up proving invaluable. The best way to utilise them is to help out with postings, responding to comments, and scheduling posts.

Virtual Coworker provides a range of convenient, easy and cost-effective services, and world-class management through time-tracking software, allowing individual businesses more time to focus on business strategy and clients. If you’re interested in how your business could start building a team in the Philippines, get in touch with our Sydney office today.

Alicia Rennie from Oxygen Executive

Technology has opened the door for virtual workers across a range of industries. But before you go ahead and fill a remote position in your company make sure you have an induction strategy in place.

When I think back to my first job in recruitment 17 years ago I never dreamed I would one day be running a company that employed someone in another country. But here we are in 2015 with our first virtual employee who happens to be 6056 kilometres away.

When it came time to hire again for our recruitment company earlier this year I started to think about the articles I had read on virtual assistants and wondered if it just might be what we were looking for. The job didn’t call for an in-house staff member and when I looked closely at the requirements of the position I realised the person didn’t even need to be in the same country.

Hiring a virtual assistant meant we were able to employ someone quickly, match our skill requirements, negotiate a flexible working arrangement and still afford to invest in training the right person for the position, rather than exhausting our budget on expensive set-up costs.

If hiring a virtual assistant adds up for you like it did for us there is one important area you can’t afford to overlook – induction. While I had read about the benefits of virtual employees I hadn’t come across much on how to make sure someone you might never meet face-to-face will become an effective part of your team.

So, here’s how we met the challenge of inducting a virtual assistant to ensure success for both employer and employee:

Do Your Prep

To ensure a smooth and professional start to your relationship with your virtual worker make sure you have their systems access and tools for communication (such as Team Viewer, Skype and file sharing software) up and running before you have your first virtual meeting. Set a program of what you want to get through in the first few days to keep the process on track and avoid any crucial information getting left out.

We sent an introductory email to our new team member prior to their start date. It included a welcome note, an outline of the induction program and some background reading.

Tip: Use technology freebies to your advantage. There are lots of great programs like Dropbox that allow you to share and store files virtually.

Terms and Expectations

No doubt you will have a contract with any virtual staff members but it’s a good idea to recap and confirm working arrangements in terms of set days and hours in your first meeting. If your employee is working from home make sure you are both on the same page when it comes to childcare arrangements and go over the procedures for if they are sick or unable to work a particular day.

It can help to talk through your contact preferences in your first meeting and find out what works best for both parties. Some people respond immediately to emails while for others Skype might be the preferred way to make quick contact.

Because your employee isn’t going to be in the office you can’t physically look at each other to see if “now is a good time to go over something” so discuss a procedure for impromptu contact and make a plan for daily or weekly catch-ups.

Tip: More frequent meetings are good early on and then you can taper off to regular meetings as you get into a pattern of working together.

Background Briefing

During the induction phase we wanted to give our new team member a sense of “who we are” as a business. We talked about the values of our organisation and provided background information on our target markets, typical clients, etc…

Our new team member had never recruited in our industry sector before so we provided resources to assist her to gain an understanding of our market.

Tip: While you want your new employee well informed about your company be careful not to overwhelm with them too much information and make sure what you are giving them is relevant and easy to digest.

Don’t Leave Out the HR

If I put my human resources hat on for a minute, I know that an employee who knows exactly what’s expected of them has a much better chance of being able to meet their employer’s needs.

We wrote a job description when we first started looking for someone to fill this position and used the induction meetings as an opportunity to go through this again and make sure we had a mutual understanding of exactly what each duty meant.

Tip: Give lots of opportunities for your new team member to ask questions!

The induction process is also the perfect time to cover how and when you will review performance. It lets them know that just because they are out of sight doesn’t mean they are out of mind.

Tip: This is a good time to recap on what interests them and what they are hoping to achieve in the role.

Be Resourceful

For me one of the key challenges of inducting virtually was to make the experience “real”. There’s no opportunity for your new virtual assistant to buddy up with co-workers or sit down for a coffee with their new manager. It can get boring quickly when it’s just the two of you talking on Skype for hours on end. To make the experience more stimulating we tried to use lots of different resources. We shared YouTube videos on how to do things and suggested industry e-newsletters for our team member sign up to.

We put real thought into how we could best support our new employees learning and growth long after we had hung up from the Skype call. We provided business planning and marketing documentation for them to go over and then set a time to catch up for any questions.

Tip: Encourage your team member to take lots of notes during discussions so they can refer back to this information on future assignments.

At the end of the day it’s really important not to forget that your virtual employee is a real, live person. Try to remember the things that made you feel valued whenever you started a new position. Even though technology has allowed us to remove geographical boundaries for employment it can still be hard to achieve the same level of understanding in-person contact provides. Encourage questions and celebrate milestones, no matter how small, especially in those first few weeks.

Alicia Rennie runs Oxygen Executive; a permanent and contract staffing solutions and HR consulting company in Sydney.

Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) are increasingly juggling cost pressures at a time when demands on service delivery are on the rise. There are solutions available to support RTOs to do more with less; one of the most significant is outsourcing. Outsourcing has been something that has, at times, had negative connotations attached to it, but the high quality and reliable work of companies such as Virtual Coworker has gone a long way to improving the perception and the efficacy of outsourcing as a realistic option for RTOs.

What is outsourcing?

In a nutshell, outsourcing is the process by which tasks that have traditionally been provided in house are contracted to an outside company or worker with particular expertise in providing that service. Essentially, if your RTO is lacking knowledge or experience in a certain area, or if you have specialised staff performing a large number of tasks outside their area of speciality, outsourcing could be a fantastic resource.

How can RTOs benefit from outsourcing?

The most commonly identified benefit for RTOs in using outsourcing is around cost savings. Outsourcing data entry through Virtual Coworker, for example, could cost you as little as 7 AUD/hr, whereas a local specialist could cost around four times that amount.

Outsourcing tasks, particularly in an RTO setting, can also improve your staffing flexibility and costs. You can outsource certain tasks at peak times, such as the beginning of a training block or over a key period for enrolments, without needing to take on staff yourself. Not only does this save you on your payroll but also on recruitment and overhead costs.

So, what can be outsourced?

Identifying the right things to outsource is of crucial importance to ensure that you are saving money without compromising the quality of the service delivery within the RTO. Essentially any repetitive tasks that don’t require in depth knowledge of the business can easily be outsourced. Administrative functions such as research, data entry, database management and social media maintenance, as well as functions such as enrollment processing or payroll management are ideal for this. Using outsourced staff for student interactions like invoicing or transcription of class notes can also work really well in an RTO setting.

How do your ensure outsourcing will be a success?

If you are interested in investigating outsourcing further, there are a number of things to consider to ensure that it will work well for your specific situation.

Identify exactly what you need

Go out and find really good people

If you’re after short-term or freelance workers, there are a number of websites you can go to hire people directly for small projects. If you are after more of a long-term team member, companies like Virtual Coworker who handle all of the recruitment, HR and payroll are probably your best bet. Regardless of the route you choose, make sure you conduct video interviews, test their internet, and ensure the person communicates well and seems dedicated and reliable.

Treat and manage the worker like any local staff

If you’re interested to speak with an Australian representative on how this can work for your company, click here.

Working with remote developers can be incredibly beneficial to a business. It’s an opportunity to employ highly skilled staff and to create working conditions that are suitable for both parties. However, for remote recruitment to work, it is crucial to find employees who are trustworthy, hard working and committed.

What are the options?

There are two main options for recruiting developers remotely. The first is sourcing them via global online platforms like Freelancer and ODesk. These sites provide access to freelance employees from all over the world. They are usually operated via a bidding system – the prospective employer posts a detailed outline of the job that needs doing and aspiring freelancers submit a proposal, including a timeline and a fee. Such platforms can be useful when an employer is seeking workers on a casual, short-term or ad-hoc basis, as they offer choice and flexibility.

The second option is to source workers through a dedicated recruitment company, such as Virtual Coworker. Specialised companies offer greater reliability and peace of mind to the employer because they usually vet and interview their freelancers, conducting thorough checks of work samples and job histories. This means that employers can begin the recruitment process with a high degree of confidence. Furthermore, this option also allows an employer to develop a long-term relationship with remote freelancers. So if a business is looking for trustworthy remote programmers, who can be employed over a long period and even on a daily basis, going with a recruitment company is the best way to go.

Regardless of which option you decide on, you’ll need to undertake a three-step process to make sure you employ an outstanding offshore developer.

Step one: Create an in-depth job description

Many employers don’t realise just how important it is to create a thoroughly detailed job description. If your criteria are vague or you’re not clear about exactly what the task involves, you run the risk of attracting a freelancer who isn’t sufficiently qualified or experienced to complete the job.

So, begin by being very certain about what you’re after. Include any necessary qualifications and experience. Mention what level of developer you’re looking for. Explain thoroughly what the job involves, including how many hours per week and the nature of the work routine (be it daily or bi-weekly). Given that you’re advertising to freelancers from all over the planet, don’t forget to mention the time zone, if it’s relevant. Remember that, if you need someone live, you might be asking them to work through their nights.

Step two: Conduct an interview

This is your opportunity to find out just what your potential employee is made of. So don’t waste it, and don’t risk under-doing it. Before getting started, prepare a list of questions, covering every single thing you need to know. Remember that it’s not only skills and experience that are relevant, but also attitude, work ethic, communication habits and commitment. Question the interviewee on all of these aspects and don’t be afraid to be a little bit challenging. After all, it’s vital that you employ someone you can trust one hundred per cent. Finding out half way through the job that they’re not reliable might be disastrous or, at the very least, expensive and stressful. Be thorough and determined during the interview process and you’re highly likely to save a lot of time and hassle.

Step three: Testing

Even after interviewing someone and being impressed with their CV, you can’t be sure of their skill level until you see them in action. The easiest way to guarantee that someone can do what they say they can do is by testing them out. So set your potential employee a real world test. Write it carefully, making sure that it covers at least eighty per cent of the skills, problem solving and fast thinking that’s necessary to get your proposed job done. Be sure to include at least one or two hours worth of coding. Test results can be surprising sometimes – the best-qualified candidates aren’t always the most skilful. Some individuals learn more in the real world than they do in educational institutions.

Ready to go!

You’re now ready to prepare for your next recruitment process. If you’re careful about completing all three steps thoroughly – from writing a job description to conducting a smart interview to setting a test – you’ll be sure to land yourself a talented, efficient, reliable employee, with whom you can develop an enjoyable and productive long-term working relationship.

Unrealistic expectations?

Imagine…you are the CEO, the CFO, and also the CMO of your business and desperately need a helping hand. In just a moment or two, you can have a virtual assistant, even a virtual team, fully ready to perform on your behalf. These remote workers can instantly solve all your problems.

Does this by any chance, sound slightly fanciful? Did throwing a few magic beans into the ground really allow a fully-fledged beanstalk to grow overnight? This fairy tale reference highlights the kind of unrealistic expectations some business owners have about the idea of outsourcing key skills and activities.

Outsourcing – yes or no?

There are valid, and often powerful and persuasive reasons for outsourcing key activities to a virtual assistant. Outsourcing allows your local team to concentrate more on the core processes within the business, areas where their expertise provides the highest value. It also benefits the bottom line by reducing overhead costs.

Equally, there are some likely areas of concern. Some business owners don’t like the idea of an outsource service, and those involved in operating it because they feel the service doesn’t have their business interests at heart like they do; or they fear that someone working remotely cannot buy into their business mission or values.

Approaching an outsourcing scenario

Outsourcing can definitely be an effective, valid, and smart business move only if approached in the right way.

Using a virtual assistant, for example, does give you the chance to delegate time-consuming and interruptive tasks, or allow you to provide round-the-clock responses to customer queries. You can also avoid the sudden problem of finding temporary, and therefore expensive, cover when emergency situations occur (and even for pre-planned vacations and the like). Also, with a virtual assistant on board you would already have key business skills in place that your people would otherwise have to spend time developing.

Keys to success

Now, there are two main ingredients to successful outsourcing. The first being that you’re willing to invest the time and energy needed to get your new staff up and running. Therefore, before you hire anyone, create processes to manage, train and monitor this new staff member. Think about how you will integrate them so they genuinely feel like part of the team; rather than an outside resource looking in.

The second is to level your expectations. Hiring a ‘jack of all trades’ to manage multiple areas in your business is a fatal flaw and common mistake that happens all the time. With so many ways to find qualified staff online, there is zero point in trying to hire one person to do everything.

Final thoughts

For proper value to be gained, and the use of virtual staff to work, business owners need to accept that this is not simply a ‘plug and play’ instant solution. Treating the virtual hiring process as you would in local hiring will greatly increase your chances of success. Like any other business activity, the correct amount of effort is needed to gain the much sought-after rewards!

Case Study: How to Build a Customer and Tech Support Team

Business Name: BigAir Group Limited (ASX: BGL)
Type of Company: Telecommunications
Positions hired: Technical and Customer Support

Explain the roles that you’re currently outsourcing

Level 1 Technical Support for residential customers and non-technical Customer Service Representatives for corporate and wholesale customers.

How did you set up multiple staff on a customer support system?

BigAir is almost completely cloud based which helped a great deal.

We use Google (business account), which made email access, wiki, document sharing and training much easier. We also use it for video conferencing although Skype can also be used as a free and reliable alternative.

For our ticketing system we use Salesforce, which again is cloud based and has helped a great deal with being able to make access for offshore staff easy. Email templates assist with ensuring efficiency and standardised communication for certain types of requests.

What do you do to best manage a full team of Philippines based employees?

I believe a big part of effectively managing a full team of Philippines based employees is to make sure they feel like a valued part of the company. We encourage constant interaction with our onshore and offshore level 1 team, and want them to feel like an extension of our operation and not an isolated remote team.

When offshoring I believe you need to be able to put all of the tasks you require the team to complete into a box. If you are not able to easily define the tasks and processes it can be difficult to achieve consistent results. I had a clear multi phase plan so we knew what we were looking to achieve within certain time frames.

Also you need to be able to measure success by having meaningful metrics so you know where you were before you setup the team offshore, then where you are at different milestones.

How do you onboard the staff to get them across the BigAir vision, culture, and process?

We have built training programs for both the technical and non-technical roles, during this training we cover off key processes and expectations.

Much of our culture is conveyed in the daily communication we have inter-team, we have group chats setup where staff ask questions and interact with each other. Certain Team Leaders and Managers are included on these group chats.

How do you keep track of performance levels of each staff?

KPIs are tracked for the all of the level 1-team members.. These are presented to the team in the form of team reports and top performers are given recognition in regular team meetings.

The periodic screen capture system used by Virtual Coworker also assists in making sure staff are focused on work related activities.

What was your interview process like? How did you make sure each staff was a good fit?

Having staff that work from home has been a learning experience, especially regarding the interview process. I learnt early in the process that extra attention needed to be given to background noise and connection stability. Home Internet connections (especially DSL) in the Philippines can be very low quality compared to Australia, while VoIP does not require much bandwidth it does require a reasonably stable connection.

As people are working from home we also looked for staff that had held previous Team Lead, SME or senior roles. Having significant previous technical support experience and a proven ability to work well unsupervised has assisted us greatly.

How was the recruitment, hiring, and setup process with Virtual Coworker?

Virtual Coworker has a fantastic hiring process and great staff that are easy to work with. They understood my requirements and were able to put forward quality candidates, the billing and setup process was simple and efficiently structured. Once we had decided on a suitable candidate we were able to have them start very quickly (within a few days).

Do you have any advice for people looking to hire offshore tech or customer support reps?

Don’t try to get the cheapest staff possible, be prepared to pay a little more, you would be surprised how much more experienced and reliable staff you can find for a relatively small additional cost per month. In some cases I have been able to obtain staff with 8-9 years technical support experience, working for companies like AT&T, Telstra, Optus, Sprint and many others. You can bring them up to speed faster and you are also much more likely to be able to retain the staff.

Make sure you are able to define your processes and training, if you can start by taking the 80% of stuff you can easily define and “put in a box”, then leave the 20% of stuff you can’t easily define for your experienced onshore staff. Make sure if it’s outside the defined parameters it gets escalated to the people who have the experience to resolve the issue quickly, you don’t want your less experienced staff taking 4-5 times as long to resolve the complex issue, when they could be resolving 4 or 5 simple requests instead.

In my opinion there are some things you want to keep onshore and some things you can effectively offshore. Leverage your onshore staff’s capability using your offshore staff. This can be done gradually and does not have to be done in one hit. For example, you could look at your existing onshore team, get rid of your lowest performer and replace them with 2-3 offshore staff!

Outsourcing work virtually is a cost-effective way to get those time-consuming tasks completed efficiently.

As this financial year comes to an end, it is time to tie up loose ends and get prepared for the next one. To assist with the transition and get the right processes in place for the new financial year, there are several areas that can easily be outsourced:

1. Bookkeeping

This can be one of the most time consuming tasks within any business, so why not have someone else keep your books up-to-date? A virtual assistant will be able to easily and automatically manage your billing and invoicing, bank reconciliations, refunds, debt collections, financial reporting and BAS statements, through cloud based app solutions like Xero.

2. Market research

This is important to the success of any business, no matter what size. Outsourcing research to a virtual assistant will help you to find objective and relevant information, analyse said information, and deliver the results in a clear format. This is a critical component to generating leads and can greatly increase the productivity of your sales team.

3. Administration

Your virtual assistant will help you undertake any basic administration tasks, including managing your calendars, scheduling appointments with clients on your behalf, capturing and responding to messages, and writing letters and memos.

4. Customer support

5. Web development

Through offering remote online management tools, outsourcing your web development to an experienced virtual team will allow you to focus on other elements of your business. The interview process to find a web developer suitable to your needs is undertaken, including a thorough screening process, coding tests, and design tests, with any further interviewing that you may require done through Skype.

6. Content writing

7. Sales Assistance

Managing the sales process is vital in terms of attracting and retaining clients. A virtual assistant will save you time by managing sales leads and CRM, giving you more time to focus on generating additional leads and translating those leads into sales. Provide a virtual sales assistant to your current business development team and witness how many more calls and meetings they’re able to attend.

8. Data entry

This is a basic task that can take up valuable business time. Have your data entered into a format that will allow you to access information in an easy and organised way, allowing you to get the most out of your data. Tasks such as this are so easy to delegate, can easily be done virtually, and are too menial for senior managers to be doing.

9. Email management

Answering emails cannot only be a mundane task, it can also be time-consuming and distracting. Consider what you could be doing in that time instead of reading and sorting through your mail. A virtual assistant can help to organise, sort, create folders, file, and manage priority mail on a daily basis.

10. Social media

With social media becoming one of the most common ways to network and communicate, it is an invaluable tool for business growth. It is therefore important to ensure frequent research, communication, and management of your social media platforms is undertaken. Utilise a virtual assistant to save you time by managing your social media daily, researching market trends, and managing ongoing messaging and communication to your followers and prospective clients.

When you’re a salesperson, you want to be out there doing what you do best: sales! If you’re like me, closing a deal is the excitement and reward you live for. Of course, there are many steps leading up to that close. Some are enjoyable, like creating relationships, having meaningful conversations, and attending events. Other tasks, like the trivial and administrative ones, aren’t so fun. This is where hiring a Virtual Assistant becomes so valuable. It’s given me more time to focus on what really matters: growing my business.

How does it work?

My Virtual Assistant Kaye is based in the Philippines. Kaye works from home, eliminating the cost and time of impractical travel. This not only betters her lifestyle, but also keeps the final hourly rate down as putting someone in an office can get expensive. She works Sydney hours, speaks fluent English, and is very competent in the area of sales and marketing.

Virtual Coworker’s unique time-tracking system and programs like Skype ensure that I can manage and communicate with Kaye at all times. Below are just a few of the things I outsource to my Virtual Assistant everyday:

Email management

Sorting through my emails in the morning was something I hated, but now my Virtual Assistant spends just half an hour every day sorting out my junk mail from my important mail. That gives me two and a half extra hours a week to convert a lead into a sale, which is a much better use of my time and experience. To make this work, spend some time during the first week training your Virtual Assistant on how you like your inbox sorted. Consider creating different folders such as “Team”, “Family”, and/or “Urgent” to more effectively manage your emails.

Calendar and diary updating

I can’t live without my online calendar. That’s why it is so important to keep it constantly up to date. My Virtual Assistant transfers events, meetings and appointments from emails and texts onto my calendar, which creates one less thing I have to think about.

Take for example that I want to schedule a client lunch. I’ll provide Kaye the details and she will log into my diary, create the event, and send out invitations. I don’t have to divert my attention from whatever else I’m doing and it saves me a few minutes in the process.

Updating CRM

My effective sales process depends on an updated and organised CRM. The more business I get, the more time I spend adding, editing, and changing the details in my CRM. My awesome Filipino Virtual Assistant has extensive experience with CRM systems, and takes this tedious task off my to do list.

My Virtual Assistant keeps my CRM updated, notifies me what stage my leads are in, and reminds me when communication is due. Because she’s copied on important sales emails and all incoming leads from our website, she can autonomously update the leads milestone and create reminders and events when needed.

Research and market mapping

Doing research is important to find my next networking event, company to contact and more, but there is no reason I need to be the one doing it. When I outsource research to my Virtual Assistant, I can spend my time interacting with my customers. My experienced, personal Virtual Assistant conducts research, analyses it for me, and delivers it back to me in an organised spreadsheet. The picture below shows the type of research my virtual assistant conducts daily.

Research-and-market-mapping

LinkedIn lead generation

Using a Virtual Assistant for LinkedIn purposes is highly effective and can seriously increase your sales. I mainly use Kaye for two purposes: research and messaging prospects.

The search function in LinkedIn is an incredibly handy tool for salespeople. Kaye’s able to find contacts quickly by utilising their search filters such as company size and seniority. This is greatly beneficial when finding people in your current target market. Kaye also connects with and messages people. I typically provide her with a message template and search criteria to follow with the ultimate goal of her setting up a meeting with myself.

A dedicated Virtual Assistant is an affordable solution that vastly improves the flow and efficiency of your workweek. My Virtual Assistant is entirely focused on my needs, leaving me free to do what I do best: generate leads and make sales. Contact us today to find out how to add a sales or marketing assistant to your team.

For those who aren’t familiar with Tony Robbins, he’s a legendary “business and life strategist” who has worked with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton, and countless other extremely successful entrepreneurs and companies. I had the privilege of seeing him live in Sydney where he spoke about bettering oneself in business, relationships and everyday life. Below are five quotes from Tony I’ve had a chance to reflect on, and how they can apply to running your business.

“Wherever focus goes, energy flows”

The importance of a right state of mind is critical when running a business. Things always go wrong but it’s imperative to focus on what you can control. If you get caught up with the menial daily activities affecting your business, you won’t have enough energy left to focus on growing it. Stay forward thinking and don’t dwell on bumps in the road.

“Learning from experience is the most expensive thing you can do”

Trying things on your own is good, but can be crippling and time‐consuming. If you’re able to hire an expert to complete a project that’s not your specialty, do it. The up‐front costs outweigh the time and effort you’d be spending otherwise; not to mention you’ll most likely see a better outcome.

Also, lean on your network for advice when you don’t fully understand something. People like helping other people, especially in business, so fully utilize the connections you’ve made and get away from finding out all the answers yourself.

“Trade your expectations for appreciation”

Set goals, not expectations. You can always work towards the former, which is your objective, plan or intent – whereas an expectation or assumption can sometimes be a self‐created burden. Appreciate the small victories you have throughout the day, week or month. Not only will your satisfaction increase, but also your motivation and productivity.

“Take disappointment and turn it into drive, or it will destroy you”

Don’t let the perceived failure of an event bring you down. Everyone fails; it’s how people respond to failure that ultimately defines them. Learn from mistakes and view failure as an opportunity to improve yourself or business. The more you let things build up, the faster you will burn out.

“Resourcefulness is the ultimate resource”

This quote personally resonates with me and is one that Tony harped on throughout the night. Resourcefulness is such an underrated entrepreneurial quality and one that is especially crucial when flying solo. Rather than wait for things to come your way, be proactive, find answers and get results. Whether it’s a new client, website feature, or team member, be creative and find ways to make your goals happen. Continually probe, and push until you are satisfied with a solution.

The days where business owners share a workspace with all of their staff are well behind us. Now, it is a rare workplace that does not have some level of remote working, whether that is a local staff working from home or a virtual assistant working in a different country.

Being co-located with our teams enables a certain amount of observation and direct contact that can be a huge help during the performance management process; but that’s not to say managing a remote workforce is an impossible task. In this article, I’ll discuss four approaches I’ve found most effective when managing remote employees.

1) Communicate regularly

With virtual assistants, there is a temptation to assume that everything is going well unless you hear otherwise. But without the advantage of working in the same space, you must make particular efforts to keep in contact with your staff to identify any performance issues before they surface. Take advantage of the technology available to you and ensure that you have regular video calls or instant messaging chats scheduled to keep the communication lines open. If you’re working with an overseas worker or virtual assistant, over communicate initially to set expectations, get over any cultural differences, and ensure they fully understand their responsibilities and role within your business.

2) Set measurable targets

When monitoring and managing the performance of remote staff, another key thing to focus on is the setting of measurable targets. Make sure that when you set your targets at the start of the review period, they reflect what you will actually be able to measure. A focus on quantifiable targets, ideally that the staff member has had a hand in developing, is invaluable. Keeping track of key performance indicators are important in any setting; however, they’re critical with remote workers as it’s tougher to gauge output when they’re not right next to you. Spending some time and energy in the beginning to create targets will make reviews and management a much smoother process as the year progresses.

3) Trust your staff

Trusting in your workers is another important element for performance management of remote staff. Of course, I’m not suggesting that you keep your head in the sand about issues that may arise, but without a positive relationship between you, managing both performance and output will be extremely challenging. Look at the big picture and remember that if someone is reaching their targets, it doesn’t actually matter when they are working or how they go about completing particular tasks. A focus on deliverables and timeliness, for example, is a lot more beneficial than ensuring your staff has logged on at a particular time each day. Awareness of your management style and how it may have to change to accommodate a remote workforce is really important.

360-Degree feedback

Our fourth approach for performance management of virtual assistants is 360-degree feedback. As mentioned earlier, you will not always be in a position to directly observe a staff member’s behaviour and work quality so you should make sure to talk to those who are in that position. It is also important throughout this process to be transparent and make sure that your staff member knows whom you will be talking to and what you will be discussing. Ideally, a brief template with key questions would be used, making it easy to document the discussions you have and use the information provided without any confusion.

Managing remote teams is certainly an adjustment for many but is a component of business today that’s essential to master. I am confident, however, that the effective use of communication, measurable targets and trusting in your staff will establish a well functioning remote working environment and make performance management a pain-free process.

If you’ve recently partnered with a recruiter to hire a staff member and had a positive experience, I’d imagine the timeline looked a little something like this:

You, the hiring manager and/or internal recruiter identified a specific need within your team;
You liaised with your consultant regarding said need and together established a plan of action around the recruitment time frame and specific requirements;
Your consultant presented their top candidate recommendations based on your brief;
Interviews were conducted, with the successful candidate offered and accepted through the assistance of your consultant.

You now have a brand new staff member who is eager and well equipped to provide value to your organisation. The process should have been timely; your relationship with your consultant open and professional, and all involved (even unsuccessful candidates) would have had a positive experience. Now you truly have a cohesive partnership; that is where the magic in the recruitment process happens!

As we know, the dream scenario doesn’t always play out as listed above, and Murphy’s Law often comes into play. There are recruitment freezes, people change their minds, counteroffers can be made, and the list goes on. However, there is one critical component that you are able to exercise control over, and that is the timeline.

Setting Expectations

Setting correct timeline expectations, and being open with your consultant regarding potential obstacles in sticking to the timeline, are extremely vital in order to facilitate a successful recruitment partnership, and ultimately provide you with the best candidate for your vacancy.

As recruitment consultants, our relationship management is two-fold for both our candidates and our clients. In order to best assist our clients, we must know our candidates inside and out; most importantly regarding their job search action items such as interviews out, potential for counteroffer, etc.

Your consultant’s role in the process is to be your advisor on the candidate process, as they have their finger on the pulse of the market at all times. The highest calibre clients fly off the shelves quickly, especially in today’s market.

Taking your consultant’s recommendation to see the candidate even a few hours earlier than the timeline you had originally thought to be suitable may be the difference between having them join your organisation as opposed to your competitors.

From personal experience, the biggest frustration for our clients and us is when prime candidates become unavailable after entering the initial stages of the recruit, due to factors, which could have been avoided if both sides had stronger communication regarding the recruitment timeframe.

Communication

The best rule of thumb is to be as open and honest with your consultant. Hearing “I am still waiting for our internal application process to close” or “Managing Director X will be the final one to choose the candidate, and he/she won’t be able to do so until X date” or “I won’t have sign off until X” from the offset immensely assists your consultant in managing the process and setting correct expectations for both you and all candidates involved.

After all, correct expectations are what make for a positive experience for you, your consultant, and all candidates involved. Positive experiences, even for unsuccessful candidates, correlate to positive brand recognition in the market, which will make all the difference in maintaining a positive image amongst potential job seekers. In return, you should expect your consultant to be open with you, providing advice on the market and having open conversations with candidates. These are all positive steps in the right direction to achieve the ideal working relationship between hiring manager and recruiter.

How do you work with your consultant to establish a successful working relationship around your recruits?

In turn, what would you like to see from your consultant’s communication style?

This is a guest blog post by Patty Drennan of Cox Purtell. You can connect with Patricia via twitter @PatriciaD_CP and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciadrennan

Name: Referee upon request
Type of Business: Executive & IT Recruitment
Type of Virtual Coworker: Full-time Recruitment Assistant

Questions:

What does your Virtual Assistant do on a daily basis?

She started off doing some of the more basic admin functions any company has. Once I realised how competent and capable she was, we started giving her more complex tasks to do. She currently helps with search, formatting CVs, filtering candidates, CRM management, and is pretty much a recruitment consultant.

What problem were you facing that made you decide to hire a Virtual Assistant?

We were looking for a cost-effective way to increase productivity in the office. We were bundled down with administrative duties and we had recruited the role locally in the past with little success.

What were your expectations heading into the recruitment of this position?

I was a bit skeptical as I’ve never utilised offshore staff. I went into it thinking I would give it a shot. I thought it would be quite tough to find someone whom I could rely on like a normal employee.

How was the process of finding the right candidate?

It was a lot easier than expected! Virtual Coworker helped simplify everything from the moment we started working together. They do a full recruitment process so I was very comfortable with the candidates they were presenting. Virtual Coworker gave me three resumes of which I interviewed all three. Two of these candidates really stood out for me making the decision extremely tough. In the end I made the right decision and a year and a half on I haven’t looked back.

How has it been working with a remote employee? What processes have you put in place to efficiently manage and communicate with your staff?

It has been easier than expected! From day one communication was my top priority. She gets in an hour before me in the morning and gets the day planned. We communicate via Skype and email on a daily basis. Response times are extremely fast and I rarely have to correct her work.

How can a Virtual Assistant provide value to other Recruitment companies?

Having a virtual assistant helps increase the time Recruiters have to work on the money making activities; managing accounts, interviewing candidates and bringing on new clients. They really help increase your productivity and efficiency by taking away the mundane time consuming tasks.

How was the recruitment, hiring and setup process with Virtual Coworker?

Virtual Coworker made the process of hiring a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines a lot less daunting. The whole process was seamless from start to finish. They take your requirements, do a full recruitment process, and send you candidates to do final interviews with. They also provide you with the ability to reference check the candidate. Once hired, they handle all of the payroll and HR and are always there in case I need anything.

How much time and money has it saved you to have a dedicated virtual assistant?

I pay a third of what I would pay a local resource and I have the keenest most loyal employee an employer could ask for.

Any advice for recruiters looking to hire a virtual assistant?

Your Virtual Assistant will eventually pay for itself. My path started with the delegation of all time consuming activities that aren’t involved in revenue raising. Now, my Virtual Assistant pays for herself through assisting in candidate sourcing. We would look at taking another Virtual Recruitment Assistant on at some point in the near future.

The one piece of advice that was given to me was to make sure they feel part of the team. Because they are working remotely, you need to humanise the voice on the end of the phone. We talk regularly, share photos and know what is going on in each other’s lives. Added to this, a small monetary bonus for success goes a long way.

More employees are working remotely from their homes, and that’s a good thing, not only for them, but also for their employers, and for the environment. The simple fact is that working in the comfort of your own home can increase job satisfaction, and satisfied workers tend to be more productive employees. Employers who let their employees work from home reap the benefits of that increased productivity, lower overhead costs and are better able to retain their employees.

So, Why Do Employers Resist?

Still, many employers resist giving their employees the option to telecommute. Some think they’ll lose control over those workers simply because they can’t meet with them face to face. Others are afraid that letting employees work from home will lower their motivation. Still others are concerned about the costs for equipment, like computers, mobile phones and printers. The truth, however, is that telecommuting doesn’t mean a loss of control, or that employees won’t be self-directed. And, if anything, telecommuting programs actually save employers money.

The Advantages of Telecommuting

Employers who have these and other fears about the effectiveness of virtual worker programs need to take a close look at the facts, and those facts point to some key benefits of allowing staff to work remotely.

Here are 5 key advantages of remote teams and virtual worker programs for business:

Australian workers prefer telecommuting: perhaps the biggest advantage is that most employees prefer having the option to telecommute. That’s especially true for Gen Y workers and recent university graduates. These workers are more accustomed to living and working in a virtual world, and doing so professionally is a major job perk that leads to increased job satisfaction.
Telecommuting increases worker productivity: several studies show that remote workers are more productive. There are a number of reasons for this increased productivity, from increased engagement in their jobs to reduced absenteeism.
Remote workers are easier to retain: of companies that have initiated telecommuting programs, almost half report a reduction in employee attrition, and the large majority point out that these programs increase their ability to hold on to valued employees. That means reduced costs to replace those employees.
Larger pool of qualified job applicants: remote job opportunities reduce the pressure to find experienced workers by bringing more qualified employees into the workforce. Skilled workers for whom commuting is not an option, like disabled workers and those who have to remain home to care for children or elderly parents, become viable job candidates for telecommuting positions. In addition, it makes it easier to integrate casual virtual assistants and offshore staff into the team when full-time employees are already used to working with remote team members.
Telecommuting will save money: most employers who sponsor telecommuting programs indicate they save money, and those savings are typically substantial. Allowing workers to telecommute means companies can reduce the size of their infrastructure and save dollars normally expended to achieve compliance with government regulations and other overheads.

Technology is the Key

Clearly, the advantages of outsourcing work to remote teams outweigh any downside, but the effectiveness of such programs means companies need to have the right technology in place. Companies that opt to outsource key operations, from web developers to virtual assistants to accountants, need to leverage state-of-the-art tools for candidate screening, online management and quality assurance.

Fortunately, the increased prominence of telecommuting and outsourcing has pushed the creation of companies with the deep experience to give SMEs the tools they need to achieve their key business objectives. Partnering with these companies is the best way to take full advantage of business solutions, which increase productivity, boost profits and enhance employee satisfaction and retention.

When working with remote teams, it’s critical to utilise programs that will best allow you and your staff to collaborate and communicate. There are a thousand apps and programs you can use to do this. In this article, I will cover the top three programs that Virtual Coworker and its clients use for seamless interaction and maximum productivity.

Trello

Trello is a free and user-friendly online project management application. Projects are presented in a bulletin board format, with corresponding lists that keep track of your projects stages (To do, doing, done, etc.).

Once each step is done, you or someone on your team moves that task to the next stage. The great thing about Trello is you can assign different steps and due-dates to various people within your team. It helps create transparency within a bigger project and holds the individual team member assigned to the task accountable.

First you would create all the steps necessary to get this done under the to-do list. Those steps could look something like: Create content, edit, graphic design, upload to website, and promote blog on social media.

Each step would be assigned to the corresponding team member and that Virtual Assistant wouldn’t start on his task until the previous step was finished. For example, your graphic designer would see on Trello that the content is ready to go, and begin creating the images to correlate with the blog post.

Skype

By now, Skype is a household name and one that the majority of people already are using within their remote teams. The reason Skype needs to be mentioned is the importance of frequent communication in a remote workplace cannot be overstated; not to mention that there are a lot of cool features most people aren’t currently using!

Below are 3 ways to best use Skype.

1) Voice and Video Calls

As previously mentioned, communication is critical and communicating often is highly recommended when working with remote colleagues / staff. I recommend you have voice communication with your staff at least once a week! This is a great way to further build your relationship and grow trust with your remote team. Skype to Skype calls are free and Skype to mobile or landlines is extremely affordable. You can find information on rates here: http://www.skype.com/en/rates/

Tip: If you’re utilising a Virtual Assistant for customer service, account management or sales purposes, I recommend you get them a hard-phone. The international call clarity will be a lot better and you can set them up with a local number which will enable him to make AND receive calls (something Skype can’t do).

2) Skype Messenger

The Virtual Coworker team uses the instant messaging function of Skype religiously! I’m constantly on it with our team as it is a great way to communicate non-urgent matters throughout the day.

Tip: If you have a Virtual Assistant, I recommend he message you every day at the start off his shift. This builds camaraderie, accountability and makes it so you’re always aware that your staff is online.

3) Screen Share

This function of Skype is so useful yet most people don’t even know it exists! The screen share function of Skype allows one or multiple Virtual Assistants to view your screen while on a call. This is great for training and orienting staff. It’s also very useful for showing your team new functions of a website or going over material before it’s live.

Tip: To access screenshare, get on a call with your Virtual Assistant, click the conversations tab, and scroll down to the middle where it says “Share Screen”.

Google Drive

Google Drive is probably the number one thing that makes working with Virtual Staff seamless and easy to do. There are other programs you can use to store, edit and share documents in the cloud, however, I find the simplicity and various functions of Google Drive make it the best choice.

Our team uses Google Drive for two main functions:

1) Documents

The “docs” function is where you go to create MS word like documents. It’s amazing because you can share it with your Virtual Assistants who are then able to view or edit the post simultaneously. As the document owner, you’re able to fully control what your staff can or cannot do; i.e. staff A can view and edit the document, staff B can only view the document.

You’re also able to share docs with people outside your company. Whenever I need changes made to the website, or new content posted to the blog, I share with my web developer and he can instantly view that particular document (note that he cannot see any other docs on my drive).

2) Spreadsheets

We use Google spreadsheets for so many different functions within Virtual Coworker. All of our recruitment, sales campaigns, and KPI’s are created and stored using the spreadsheet function. It has all of the necessary basic functions that Excel has and is completely in the cloud. Being able to access and edit spreadsheets from multiple devices anywhere in the world is critical for remote team collaboration.

As in Google Docs, your whole team will be able to access and edit (if permitted) the document at one time. For us, having recruiters in all different locations, this is a must-have feature that keeps communication and passing of information a seamless process.

Tip: Have your Virtual Assistant keep track of her KPIs using Google spreadsheets. You two can view and go over it together every Monday and keep track of progress.

What do you use within your team? Comments and suggestions are much appreciated!

With the help of a Virtual Assistant (VA), you can make your business more efficient and productive without having to micromanage everything. In fact, you can run your business even while you sleep! Here’s how:

Answering Customer Service/Enquiries

Answering questions from customers and interested prospects is a very time-consuming process. However, this is a necessary task that must be done to gain a good image and earn the trust of your customers. Fortunately, a virtual assistant can answer calls and customer enquiries for you. With the help of a virtual assistant, you can efficiently manage customer relationship and respond to enquiries in a prompt and timely manner.

Email Screening

Not everything that goes into your inbox is urgent or important and sorting out your email can take up a lot of time. To maximise time, use a virtual assistant to screen your email and identify the ones that need to be junked or addressed immediately. You can also train your virtual assistant to respond on your behalf.

Market Research

Ugh, market research. What could be more vexing and time-consuming? If doing market research isn’t your thing, you can rely on your virtual assistant to do the job for you. Your virtual assistant can conduct extensive research so you can obtain all the information you need about your current customers, prospects, existing competitors, prevailing market trends, and other valuable data that you can use to your advantage.

Social Media Management

If your business doesn’t have a Twitter account or a Facebook page, you’re missing out on potential business. Like answering customer enquiries, however, responding to all of your social media friends and followers takes a lot of time and effort. Good thing a virtual assistant can manage your social media accounts for you. She can regularly post status updates, tweet about your latest products or services, and establish brand awareness by connecting with your current and future customers.

Data Entry

Need to create and fill out hundreds of documents and spreadsheets? Or perhaps you need to accomplish that dreadful expense report, which is due next week? Whatever the case may be, you don’t have to go through the agony of having to create dozens of files and documents if you have a virtual assistant. Virtual Assistants from the Philippines will be able to complete such a mundane yet essential task in a quick and efficient manner.

Bookeeping

Managing the books is one of those tasks that when finished, comes a huge sigh of relief. Stop worrying about doing bookkeeping yourself, scan your receipts, and have a VA do the grunt work. A lot of VA’s are experienced with balance sheets, invoices, and creating profit and loss statements.

Miscellaneous Tasks

Aside from the tasks mentioned above, a virtual assistant can schedule and confirm your appointments, manage your work calendar, come up with project proposals, and even book your travel arrangements.

Virtual Assistants are a powerful tool to use to maximise your time and make money whilst you sleep. If you want your business to grow and at the same time, have more time for yourself, you should automate your business by hiring a skilled and reliable virtual assistant.

Have you automated parts of your business with virtual staff? Tell me about your experience!

8 Things to Look For In a Virtual Assistant

Outsourcing specific roles to Virtual Assistants is a critical component for growing businesses. There are, however, a lot of attribute that separate average virtual assistants from great virtual assistants. Below are 8 things to look for in a Philippines Virtual Assistant.

1. Excitement

Find out if they’re pumped up by this opportunity. This is a great indicator of how hard working and loyal the virtual assistant will be.

2. Communication

English and conversational skills can separate the good from the GREAT virtual assistants.

3. Passion

Discover what they’re passionate about in their personal and professional life. You want someone who will genuinely care about you and your business.

4. Intelligence

They don’t need to be the smartest but need to be smart enough. Make sure they have the necessary skills and can be trained up.

5. Detail Oriented

Find someone who notices and cares about the finer details and can proactively change or troubleshoot things.

6. Willing to Learn

Virtual Assistant who thirsts for knowledge will grow into an invaluable piece of the team.

7. Good Listener

Find a Philippines based virtual assistant who can take directions and execute a plan. Babysitting is not what you signed up for!

8. Personable

The goal is here is to forge a long-term business relationship so find someone you genuinely like being around and talking to!

Outsourcing can be quite the daunting task. There are certain practices from recruitment to staff management that if done correctly will lead to outsourcing success, however, if disregarded can lead to total failure.

The following are the ten biggest mistakes you can make when outsourcing

Have a vague idea of the job role

Having a defined job role is critical to outsourcing success. If you don’t know the specific tasks or projects you want accomplished, how will your staff? Before you even start the process of finding a virtual assistant, create a thorough and descriptive job description outlining the duties of the role and the qualifications/skills you are seeking.

Hire tech people when you have no idea about tech!

A great way to stuff up and waste a lot of money is to hire someone technical without having a clue about tech. If you are looking to hire a developer, make sure you have someone on your team who understands tech and will be in contact with the offshore staff.

Hire someone with poor English

One of the more frustrating things when outsourcing is trying to manage staff with poor English skills. Not only will you lose your patience, but the quality of work will tend to be inferior as directions can get misunderstood. There are certain countries such as the Philippines where English skills are generally high, however, always make sure you speak with the person before you hire.

Don’t conduct a thorough and proper interview

One of the worst mistakes you can make is not administering a rigorous interview process. Always interview on Skype and make sure the person is someone you are not only confident in but also someone you want to be working with on a daily basis. Give your top two or three candidates a mini project or test and hire who does best.

Don’t give clear instructions

Although most staff won’t need to be ‘babysat’, providing clear instructions on what needs to be accomplished is pivotal when offshoring. Hold a daily or weekly meeting at a set time and go over what was completed and what’s on the agenda. This helps staff understand what is expected and also gives them a chance to clarify anything before they begin work.

Have too high of expectations

Don’t go into offshoring expecting to hire a godsend for your business. There aren’t many people in Australia with cross functional skill sets so don’t expect virtual assistants to. When you are creating a job description, define the exact role you’re after. Vague roles lead to sub par candidates which lead to sub par results.

Treat offshore staff differently

Just because a staff is overseas and not in the office doesn’t mean you should neglect them and treat them differently than you would local employees. Make them feel part of the team by including them in meetings and company emails. This will go a long way in ensuring loyalty, engagement, and hard work.

Don’t communicate frequently

If there is one thing that will all but ensure outsourcing failure, it is lack of communication. Communication is key with in-office employees and is doubly important when dealing with virtual employees. Make sure you communicate via voice or video chat at least once a week and be in contact by email or messaging daily.

Don’t efficiently collaborate

When done properly, working in remote teams can be just as efficient as working in an office-based setting. There are various tools that can make the transportation of data and ideas seamless. Google Drive, Dropbox, Trello and Basecamp are all great tools to create and manage projects and documents. When working with offshore developers, make sure they are saving all code to a central depository such as GitHub.

Disregard cultural differences

When dealing with offshore workers, there are certain cultural differences in how people communicate and work. Understanding these differences is pivotal to forging that long-lasting business relationship you’re seeking. Differences such as communication style, life priorities, and conflict resolution all impact the way someone conducts business.The better you comprehend these differences, the more you will get out of staff.

Interested in adding outsourced staff to your team? Click here.

I get asked all the time about the best way to create an amazing business relationship with a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines. In my experience, the way to do this can be a lot different from approaches most bosses take in western societies. Solid relationships are not built on money or gifts. It’s not about that. It’s all about connecting with your staff on a personal level. Take these five approaches to build the most loyal and productive VA in the world.

Celebrate the little victories

The importance of celebrating little victories as they happen is vastly underrated. If your VA does something noticeably awesome, let him know. It will take you 30 seconds to fire off a Skype message or email that will have a daylong positive effect on your staff. Giving a virtual high-five or kudos increases motivation, employee satisfaction and loyalty.

It is proven that celebrating little victories and milestones with your staff will:

Expedite the attainment of a bigger goal
Increase job satisfaction, motivation and confidence
Make employees feel important and appreciated

Remember that when training and managing an employee, especially one who is remote, there is no better return on your investment than to give him or her multiple reasons to wake up each morning and WANT to work for you.

Don’t alienate your VA

Treat your virtual assistants as you would any of your in-house staff. It can be easy to neglect them given their distance and time zone difference, but this is a recipe for failure. Include them on all of your team meetings and emails. Make them feel just as valued and respected as the person sitting next to you in the office.

This is ESPECIALLY important if you are trying to build up a full team offshore. The way you treat and manage your first VA will most likely be a manual for all future staff. Put in the time to get it right your first hire and it will be much easier to create a self-functioning and cohesive team down the track.

Treat them like they’re family

If there is one cultural attribute to know about people in the Philippines, it’s that family is EVERYTHING. Staff will quit their dream job on a whim if there is a family problem that needs attention. Why is this important to you as their boss? Filipinos treat their employer and colleagues like family. The more you include them in your company’s culture and create a family atmosphere, the better results you will see.

Try these little things to get a laugh, smile and loyal VA

Friday afternoon GIF of a cat dancing (they love this)
Team shout out for individuals birthdays
Phone call and team email for work anniversaries

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Treating people (especially staff and coworkers) with respect is a no-brainer but an action that a lot of people shockingly forget to do when working with virtual assistants. It’s easy to forget you’re dealing with experienced professionals when they are working in a different country and making a fraction of what workers get paid in Australia. Don’t fall into this trap. Show your staff that you value and care about their insights.

Improve them

If you see a chance to improve the skills of your staff, take it! Investing in the growth of your virtual assistants can lead to them taking a bigger role in your company than you ever could have imagined. Not only will it increase results and save you time, it will also send a message to your virtual assistants that you genuinely care about their growth as professionals and see them as valued members of your team.

Along this line, let your VA know that it is OKAY to ask questions. One of the more noticeable cultural differences with staff from the Philippines is they tend to shy away from proactively asking questions or giving suggestions. It’s highly important to communicate with your virtual assistants from the beginning that it is okay to clarify something if unsure, and on the other hand it is completely fine, and they should be and encouraged, to give suggestions if they see room for improvements. By doing this you provide an atmosphere for betterment and decrease the chance of mistakes happening.

Interested in adding a Virtual Assistant to your team? Drop me a line. Kevin@virtualcoworker.com

Hiring virtual assistants in the Philippines (VAs) is a great option if you’re running on full capacity or looking to improve productivity and efficiency. With many online assistants specialising in various business processes and marketing skills, they can take a huge load off your shoulders. But regardless of how good the VA is, you will not see results if you are unable to delegate. The following are my five biggest tips to best delegate tasks to your virtual Assistant.

Know your assistant’s strengths and weaknesses

Before you assign anything to your VA, it is important to ensure that he is indeed the right person for the job. If you don’t know what your assistant is capable of, then it will be tough to get the most out of your virtual assistant. In addition, if you’re not aware of what your assistant’s weaknesses are, the two of you are at a greater risk of botching down an important project. So take the time to know your virtual assistant well before delegating a task to him.

Clearly define the tasks you want to delegate

Proper delegation starts with good communication. Therefore, start by defining the tasks you plan to delegate or assign to your virtual assistant. Whether you want your VA to book a flight or do target market research, communicate the relevant details of each task as clearly and succinctly as possible. Do not hold back on information. The more specific you are with your initial instructions, the less time you will have to spend clarifying.

Encourage your virtual assistant to ask questions if there is something he doesn’t understand. And more importantly, let him know he can contact you and you’re willing to answer his queries. By providing your VA with everything he needs to know about the task at hand, your assistant will be more prepared and capable to fill your shoes.

Set standards

Along with the details of the job, you should also set guidelines or work standards for your virtual assistant to follow. For instance, if you’ve hired your assistant to create marketing copies for you, you should show him the writing style that you have been using before so he can come up with copies whose tone and voice are similar to those in your previous write-ups. If you are to delegate accounting tasks, ensure that your assistant knows how data and information are processed and handled properly.

Be clear about your deadlines

Whenever you delegate a task to your Filipino virtual assistant, especially those that are time-sensitive, you should set schedules or deadlines. Whether you expect your assistant to report in everyday or every week, you should make it known and be very clear about it. Not only will this help with overall productivity, it also enables your virtual assistant to manage his time efficiently.

Take advantage of available technology

Today, there are many collaborative apps that you can use to simplify the process of delegating a task to your virtual assistant. For instance, you can use Grexit, an app that helps you keep track of continuous projects and assignments. There’s also Google Docs, which allows you to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users. As for communicating with your Filipino Virtual Assistant, there are a number of free video and chat applications like Google Hangouts and Skype you can use.

When hiring a virtual assistant (VA), conducting a preliminary interview is very important. Interviewing a prospective worker lets you know what that applicant is capable of and verify that he or she is indeed the right person for the job. As you may know, choosing the wrong VA for the role you to fill in is a big headache, not to mention a huge waste of time. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to ask the right interview questions so you can identify the person that can fulfil your specific needs and job requirements.

1. What are your primary skills and expertise?

This is necessary for obvious reasons. If you want someone to do something for you, like design a website, for instance, common sense dictates that you choose the person who knows exactly what he or she is doing. Otherwise, what’s the point of hiring someone who cannot satisfactorily perform the role you want him to fill in? As such, you should determine if a prospective VA is qualified to assist you and has the specific skill set that matches the job description.

2. Do you have experience with ?

It isn’t enough that you know that a prospective VA has the skills to do the tasks you have in mind. It is also important to get the assurance that he or she is good at doing his job. These days, there are virtual assistants whose qualifications and experience range from zero to mere entry level. Thus, it will certainly help to determine an applicant’s level of competency and experience before hiring him. This way, you’re confident that the VA you’ll hire is well-equipped to handle the responsibilities his job entails.

3. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

This is not so much about the answers themselves but more about the way a prospective VA answers the question. A capable person, whether he is a virtual assistant or not, would be aware of his own strengths and weaknesses and will be able answer this question without a problem.

But if the applicant believes that he has no weakness, then obviously, you might want to move on to the next candidate. This basically means that that person is not open to growth and change. He might also have problems with accepting accountability or constructive criticisms in case he makes mistakes.

4. What are your working hours?

Knowing the best times and days you can contact your VA is essential to your business. As such, you should get the VA’s working hours and compare them to your requirements. And if you’re going to hire someone located on the other side of the world, be mindful of the time difference.

5. How quickly do you respond during working hours?

While often overlooked, this question is something you should ask as it lets you know how long it will take your VA to get back to you via calls or emails when you need something. Always remember that communication between you and your assistant is vital. Therefore, anything that concerns it should be established and made clear early on.

6. Have you had a client who had difficulty describing his needs?

Surprisingly, there are many employers who cannot exactly explain what they want from their VAs. By asking an applicant this question, you can gauge his capability to solve problems when faced with a similar situation. You can test his initiative and determine how he would react in case you want something done but can’t provide enough details or don’t have the knowledge on how to accomplish it.

7. What would you do if you have a deadline and your computer suddenly crashed?

According to Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. As such, it is important to gauge the applicant’s preparedness in case of accidents. Your VA should have a contingency plan in place to ensure that deadlines will be met and important tasks will be completed, no matter what the circumstances are.

8. Do you have references I can contact?

While there are virtual assistants who have reviews and testimonials you can read on their blogs or website, it is still important to contact the applicant’s previous clients who can vouch for his professionalism so you can validate his claims. If there is any sign of hesitation on the applicant’s end when you ask this question, you might want to think twice before hiring that person.

9. What are your interests? What do you enjoy the most about your job?

Not only will these questions let you know the things your VA is passionate about, which is something that can be quite handy in the future, they also say a lot of things about you as an employer.

It basically shows that you are genuinely interested in knowing the person not just on a professional level, but on a personal level as well. The mere fact that you took the time to ask questions that aren’t deeply work-related gives the VA the impression that you’re someone who’s approachable and easy to get along with.

Interviews are a vital aspect of the hiring process, whether you’re hiring a virtual assistant or a member of your in-house staff. They let you know what an applicant is like, what motivates him, and what makes him tick. So don’t go hiring people without asking them these vital questions to ensure that the virtual assistant you’ll choose will fit your business like a glove.

Whether you employ full-time, part-time, or virtual assistants, it is always important to establish good relationships with them. Studies have shown that building good relationships with the members of your team can improve overall business productivity and efficiency and help you generate greater revenues. Here’s how you can build a strong and successful relationship with your employees.

Don’t hire purely based off qualifications

A person’s skills and qualifications are not the only things that are important when choosing someone to fill a job vacancy. It is also essential to identify the personal attributes and qualities of a prospective employee. As the popular saying goes, “hire for attitude, train for skills.” So make sure to conduct some prior research before finalising the hiring process to find the person with the right mindset who fits your company culture.

Properly welcome new staff

Setting up a good orientation program can help new employees quickly adjust to their new work environment. It also helps build their confidence and promotes teamwork. More importantly, it enables you to develop a better understanding of individual personalities, competencies, and experiences and gives them a better understanding of your company’s values and culture.

Manage consistently

Business owners, managers, and supervisors must be consistent with their decisions and the way they treat everyone in the workplace. If you have a decision to make, be decisive about it. Otherwise, it can affect employee morale and make your staff lose their respect for your judgment.

Celebrate the little victories

Take the time to reward your workers for a job well done. Something as small as buying your staff lunch goes a long way. Even non compensatory rewards such as public recognition work wonders. Not only will this boost your staff’s morale, this will also give them the motivation to work harder and exert more effort into fulfilling their responsibilities.

Walk the walk

If you want your employees’ full loyalty and cooperation, you need to set great examples. If you set some ground rules for good behaviour, make sure you follow them, too. Always lead by example and you’ll have not only your staff’s loyalty, but their utmost respect and admiration, as well.

You always hear people talking about Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but as a business development resource for B2B service providers, LinkedIn is by FAR the most powerful social media tool around.

For amateurs and experts alike, the following tips will help you master LinkedIn:

Become a Thought Leader

In order to build your personal brand, and trust amongst your network, it’s important to become a thought leader in your field. Doing so will make you the go-to resource for any industry relevant questions or enquires from your connections.

Post content that has to do with your industry, what you’re selling, and your target market. For example, I’ll post content about managing remote based staff, outsourcing and info on local high growth companies. This does not always have to be unique content! Blog posts are good, as they lead back to your website, but odds are you do not write one everyday. For finding industry articles, check out Topsy and Feedly.
Comment on relevant updates from your connections. If a connection posts an article about your company’s industry, leave a comment with your opinion and/or advice. Commenting not only gets seen by the original author of that post, but his entire network as well! I have gotten leads from 2nd connections by doing this.
Join the discussion in groups. Join groups specifically geared to your industry and the industries of companies you’re targeting. Share content, leave comments and create relationships through discussion.

Use Groups to Message Prospects

One great hack to message prospects that aren’t currently connections is to join groups they are involved in. LinkedIn allows you to send direct messages to anyone in any group you join. This is an amazing advantage as it allows you to contact almost anyone you’re targeting in any industry.

For instance, if this week I decide to target Recruitment companies, I will join all groups that have to do with human resources, recruitment, and executive search in Australia. Once accepted into groups, I have direct access to thousands of contacts in my target market with whom I’m not a direct connection. Not only can I send anyone in that group a message, I now have a point of reference (group x).

Utilise Advanced Search of LinkedIn Premium

The search function in LinkedIn might be the number one most powerful tool this site has to offer. With LinkedIn premium, you can literally narrow your search by industry, company size, seniority level, and/or location amongst other things. Even without upgrading to premium, the search function is pretty amazing.

For example, I may want to aggregate all senior level recruiters in the Sydney area that own or operate companies of 1-50 people.
Using the advanced search makes it super easy to find exactly whom you are targeting. It cuts out all middlemen and gatekeepers that come with cold calls, and gives you the avenue to contact the majority of decision makers you are going after.

Create a Great Profile

In my opinion, having a great profile page is one of the most important parts of your LinkedIn strategy. If you’re using LinkedIn to create relationships and develop business for your current company, your profile should not be a life-long CV. It should highlight what you’re doing now and focus on what you’re ultimately trying to sell.

Include a description of what you’re company does, how you help people or businesses, and what your value offering is. Link any articles or blogs you’ve published, educational videos and anything else that will give you credibility to potential connections who visit your profile. As with any website strategy, the goal of your page is to have people staying on longer and reading moreabout what you do and how you can ultimately help them.
Make sure you have a professional photo that reflects your company’s culture and how you want people to perceive you. If you’re in finance and want to be perceived as powerful and trustworthy, a conservative business suit is your best bet. On the other hand, if you’re in a tech startup and want the ‘Gen Y’ perception going, you may choose to dress more casually. It might not be fair, but people who use an iPhone photo or a group photo for their LinkedIn profile picture instantly lose credibility. No iPhone selfies, nights out with the mates,or beer drinking photos should be used!

Virtual Coworker

Outsource your LinkedIn strategy to a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines and discover more methods to enhance your business by contacting Virtual Coworker.

A virtual assistant (VA) can greatly improve your productivity and, at the same time, give you more opportunities to focus on business and personal activities you enjoy the most. But how can you tell that a VA is indeed working for you? Unlike regular employees, you cannot exactly tell your VA to “step into your office” so you can have a quick chat with him and check up on what he’s doing. Utilise the following tips to better monitor the performance of your virtual coworker.

Set KPIs

KPIs are put in place to help you measure not just the overall performance of your enterprise, but the performance of your staff, including your VA. Therefore, prior to hiring a VA, you should document what you expect from him or her. Set standards and clearly define what you want the VA to accomplish at the end of every work week.

Keep in mind, however, that your KPIs should be as specific as possible to avoid misunderstandings and confusion. Also, they should be realistic and achievable. Set the KPIs according to the skills and capabilities of your VA in addition to the overall goals of the company.

Establish Specific Work Hours

Clearly define what time you expect the VA to work. At the start of each project, you should consider creating a worksheet detailing your VA’s weekly or daily deliverables. Then, have the VA fill out the sheet and indicate how long it would take him to complete each task. This will help you verify if the VA is working reasonable hours for the tasks you assign him.

Require Your VA to Send Daily Reports

Have your VA send a report at the end of his shift. This helps you keep track of the VA’s daily performance. At the same time, the daily reports will update you on the status of the project he’s working on. It may seem unnecessary and even elementary, however, over-communication is highly important to making any remote relationship work..

Set Weekly Meetings

Organise weekly meetings via Skype or other videoconferencing software so you can personally discuss the agenda for the week and what the VA has accomplished the week before. Weekly meetings also give both of you the opportunity to clarify certain issues and discuss potential roadblocks or challenges that can affect the project. A great way to do this is to have a set meeting every Monday morning.

Use Time Tracking Software

You can also use a program or software that lets you track the performance of your virtual staff in real time. Such software is designed to take a screenshot of your VA’s desktop and keep track of their mouse and keyboard activity levels. Although this may seem invasive, it really does help improve accountability.

When you have a virtual staff, it is very important that you spend some time ensuring that they are doing their work. Since it is impossible for you to physically check up on your VA at a moment’s notice, using the abovementioned strategies is essential to make sure they are indeed working hard.

Do you have virtual staff? How do you keep track of their performance?

Having a sound lead generation strategy is a pivotal part of any business. It’s what attracts new clients and expands your customer base, allowing you to sustain your business and get access to a steady flow of income. Generating leads, however, is often a time-consuming task. If you focus your time and energy solely on this activity, you won’t get anywhere. After all, you need to manage other aspects of your business, too. For this reason, consider getting a virtual assistant to help you with the following:

LinkedIn Research and Marketing

Imagine how many more prospects and leads you could get if you had someone sending tailored messages daily to people within your target market? LinkedIn makes it very easy to reach specific people and industries. Use a Virtual Assistant to find these people, connect, and send messages. Once a new connection becomes a qualified lead, take over the reigns and make a sale.

Email Campaigns

Creating targeted email campaigns is tough, but when done successfully, it can be a very effective tool for touching base with current and future clients. A Virtual Assistant experienced with email marketing will be able to create Mail Chimp campaigns, layouts, and newsletter copy. Gone are the days where you need to stress about when your next newsletter is getting sent.

Telesales and Appointment Setting

One of the best advantages of Filipino Lead Generation Specialists are their English skills and cultural similarities to western countries. As such, it is generally much easier for them to interact with English-speaking customers and understand what needs to be done to make that sale. This combined with a great work ethic allows them to effectively communicate your value offering to potential clients.

Social Media Management

Social media is an effective tool for creating brand awareness and building strong relationships with your current and future customers. Use a Virtual Assistant to send tweets and updates about your latest products and services. You can also ask your VA to engage and connect with your friends, followers, and brand advocates to maintain credibility and uphold your good image.

Target Market Research

Web research is tedious and boring task yet an essential part of any company’s strategy. Provide your Virtual Assistant with the information you’re seeking, and let them come back to you with results and recommendations. Then, use the data you have obtained to create better products or services that will grab your prospects’ attention. Research is also an important part of any lead generation strategy.

Having a Virtual Assistant speciialised in lead generation could be a game changer for your business. With his or her help, you can find potential clients who can contribute to the continuous growth of your business. But before you hire a virtual assistant to help you generate leads, see to it that you perform due diligence to ensure that you have the right person for the job.

Have you outsourced lead generation before? Share your thoughts!

Hiring virtual assistants (VAs) is one of the most effective and inexpensive solutions to manage aspects of your business. VAs can be a huge help and unlike hiring a full-time employee, you don’t have to spend a large amount of money to enlist their services. Like any boss-employee relationship, however, it is very important that you mesh well with your virtual assistant to ensure the success of your business. Here are some important things you must know about working with a virtual worker.

1. Don’t expect a plug and play solution when you hire a VA

Keep in mind that outsourcing is not a magic pill that makes everything work perfectly once your virtual assistant gets onboard. After all, even highly skilled professionals still need time to adjust to their new work environment before they can reach full productivity. So be realistic and don’t make absurd expectations about your virtual assistant.

2. It is important to train your virtual assistant

As mentioned earlier, VAs need time to familiarise themselves with their new work environment. As such, you should take the time to train your virtual assistant in your systems and processes so they can quickly start producing quality work that meets your standards.

3. Give clear instructions

Give instructions as succinctly and clearly as possible, especially when delegating a task for the first time. Encourage your virtual worker to ask questions if there are things about the project that he or she doesn’t understand. Make sure you answer these questions as quickly as possible. Always remember that assuming your VA knows and understands everything can get you into trouble.

4. Set realistic timelines

Don’t expect your virtual assistant to finish an extensive ten-page sales report in 30 minutes or less. Not only is this unreasonable, it isn’t something that is doable, either. As such, consider the parameters in place on each task and set realistic timelines.

5. Treat your VA as part of the team

Your VA is an important part of your business and should be treated as such. Trusting and helping your virtual assistant develop a sense of belongingness can boost his morale and motivate him further. To ensure loyalty and hard work, treat virtual assistants the exact same way you would in-house employees.

6. Praise your virtual assistant

If you want to establish a strong relationship with your virtual assistant, give praises when projects are accomplished. This will make your VA feel good about himself, which helps boost confidence, loyalty and productivity.

7. Always pay on time

Being the business owner, you don’t want your virtual assistant to miss important deadlines. On the same token, your VA doesn’t want his pay to get delayed. Otherwise, he will be worrying about paying his bills, which can affect the quality of his work. If you want your VA to stay focused, always pay on time.

I am excited and proud to announce Virtual Coworker has been selected as a finalist in Anthill’s Cool Company Awards 2013. We always knew the people of Virtual Coworker were cool, but having our company selected as one of the coolest companies in Australia is quite validating.

Virtual Coworker is one of four finalists in the ‘Global Growth’ category. Anthill’s criteria for this award is the following: “An Australian company that has achieved outstanding global growth or demonstrated the potential to expand outside of its traditional boundaries and grow globally”. Our ability to recruit experienced Filipino staff for clients worldwide must have won over the judges.

Virtual Coworkers Founder and CEO Braden Yuill said, “Being a finalist for the coolest company in Australia is a great acknowledgement of the hard work our team in Australia, the Philippines, and America has done. We will continue to strive towards providing excellent and cost-effective staff for companies all over the world!”

The winner will be selected from a panel of expert judges. On November 21, representatives from the “bodaciously bad-ass Cool Company Top 100” will gather in Melbourne to celebrate their achievements and watch the category winners and coolest company of 2013 unveiled.

For information on the rest of the ‘Cool 100’, check out:
http://anthillonline.com/top-100-coolest-companies-in-australia-2013/

As a marketing and sales professional, I know the feeling of having a list of tasks stack up in front of me. Whether it’s entering client details into Mailchimp, updating my CRM or prospecting for new leads, hours of my day are filled with essential, but not high value tasks. Unloading some of the lower value steps of the sales process will free up your day to focus on higher value tasks. This mean you have more time to close a deal rather than search for one.

Virtual assistants, if utilized properly, can streamline the sales process by performing the following duties leading up to and following closed business:

Research: As an experienced professional in your field, there is no reason you should spend any time doing research! Doing research is very important for finding your next networking event, company to contact, and so on, however, it is a task that a Virtual Assistant can do just as effectively! Why not outsource research to a VA so you can spend those extra hours talking and interacting with customers? An experienced personal virtual assistant will be able to conduct research, analyse it, and deliver it back to you in a timely manner.

Updating CRM, Mailing List: Having an updated and organized CRM is crucial to any effective sales process. It is your lead database and helps you interpret your sales funnel so you know which stage each one of your leads is at. The more business you get, the more time you spend adding, editing and changing details in your CRM. Virtual Assistants have extensive experience with CRM systems and can easily take this tedious task off your hands. Your Filipino VA will update your CRM, inform you on which stage your leads are at, and remind you when you need to get in touch with them.

Interact on Social Media: Social media is an effective tool that, even in today’s technology savvy world, not enough sales professionals use. Regardless of whether time constraints or a lack of understanding is holding you back, allow a VA to update your social media sites in order to engage with potential and existing customers. They have experience with LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, understanding how to use each medium to attract, interact and qualify leads.

Diary and Email Management: Sorting through emails in the morning can be a tedious and painful task. If a VA can save you just a half hour each day sorting out the junk from pertinent emails, that’s two and a half extra hours per week you have to try to convert a lead into a sale! The same thing goes with updating your online calendars. These are simple tasks that an offshore Virtual Assistant can do just as efficiently as you! Hand your email account keys to your VA and let them perform these lower value, time consuming tasks.

Data Entry: Creating spreadsheets and reports are essential duties but tasks that most of us learned how to effectively do in high school. The repetitive nature of creating a spreadsheet can be agonizing. Why not outsource this to someone who quite possibly has more experience and efficiencies than you?

As they say, time is money. By offloading the lower value tasks you currently do yourself to an offshore VA for six dollars per hour, you create time to focus on the tasks that actually make you money. If you still aren’t convinced that a Virtual Assistant can make your life easier, let’s grab a coffee and continue the conversation.

This has been my constant motto as an entrepreneur with 2 decades of building businesses. In the beginning it meant I would pay someone else to wash my car while I focused on meeting an important deadline from the waiting bay. But ever since I hired my first offshore employee in the Philippines, that motto has taken on a whole new meaning – I now consider it a crucial part of any small to mid-sized business’s success.

I speak to a lot of business owners whose days are buried under a mountain of growing administration tasks. It’s like they reach an inflection point where they are struggling to meet the increase in demand for their goods or services, limiting the growth that they have worked so hard to achieve. Other business owners need to generate sales and achieve that momentum but are cash-strapped. In an increasingly global economy, business owners are starting to look offshore to hire virtual employees who can help them overcome these growing pains.

It was Silicon Valley companies that first looked abroad to India for coding and other software development grunt work. Soon IT services were being offered by other low-cost, talent-rich nations like the Philippines. Outsourced positions have now expanded to include help desks and call centres, web developers, SEO, telemarketing, Human Resources, and even accounting functions.

It might sound daunting but hiring employees to work remotely is only becoming easier and more accessible. There are several companies out there offering different levels of service to help you recruit overseas talent, depending on your specific needs and experience with the process. The key is to be very specific about what you are looking for, and then like any recruitment process, it becomes a game of narrowing down the talent pool.

The Philippines specifically has become a popular destination when it comes to Outsourcing, giving India a real run for its money. This is because the local population is taught English at school as one of two official national languages, and they are also culturally compatible with Western clients. The BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry’s revenues hit $13.5 billion in 2012 from $11 billion in 2011. Outsourcing in IT alone is expected to grow to $25 billion by 2016. Technically savvy college graduates are eager to work for multinational companies making the Philippines one of the top destinations for IT recruitment.

In some cases hiring offshore can be 80% less expensive. While the debate rages about companies taking their work offshore, less is said about how businesses on the smaller end of the scale can actually keep afloat using overseas labour, thereby contributing more to their local economy. The reality in my businesses is that wage costs are our biggest expense. With the help of inexpensive labour we are able to enhance productivity and the quality of our business, improve turnaround time and grow larger faster.

I will say though, we have learned a lot of lessons in communication. There is an element of being face-to-face in an office that your remote employees, be they local or overseas, don’t benefit from. The emotional cues, office culture, and constant back-and-forth are obstacles that you need to overcome in the remote workplace. I have found that building in the structure of regular meetings, connecting with voice calls at least every 2-3 days, and being very specific about deadlines and expectations have helped my overseas employees work well with our local team. Like anything, it takes practice, but once you get into a groove, having an extra set of hands remotely is a beautiful thing.

Managing any team can be hard, however as we all know there are good managers and bad managers. The thing that differentiates from good or bad is simply the way a person manages tasks and people. When working with remote teams, offshore or not, different things are important when compared to working with people face to face. Many of the things we do naturally with people in front of us, we can easily forget this with our remote teams. Remote teams also loose the benefit of seeing emotions such as a smile on our face, with different cultures also thrown into the mix things can easily go wrong.

With all the above points aside, working with international and remote teams can be one of the most rewarding ways of working. Thanks to the Internet, people are brought together in ways never before possible. This allows smaller businesses to utilize the benefit of reduced labor costs that large multinational organizations have been doing for many years. The trick is to give the right tasks to the right people, remembering that what might seem obvious to you, may not be obvious in a different location or country.
Home working will become more and more popular as long as effective structures are put in place. Even with the best of structures there are some key areas to consider:
– Skype can create a bridge between people over long distances. Instant messaging is quick and useful for updates, however making free calls using Skype over the Internet is cost effective. Especially easy to do when people are working on laptops that have built in microphones and web cameras. Using video conferencing over Skype is free to use and can really help showing non-verbal communication between people.
– Regular updates are extremely important when working with remote teams, sometimes it can be useful to schedule daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly quick updates. This reminds everyone that tasks need to be completed and also checks that all involved are working toward the same goals.
– Online management tools can really ease the logistical problems and organization. There are many available; basecamp.com is one good solution for project management and toggl.com has great time tracking features with basic project planning capabilities. These are online only tools;however, even spreadsheets and word documents can be very useful, combine these with such innovations as Google Docs and life can become much easier.

– Culture always has to be considered, but it can take time to learn how to manage and utilize knowledge of different cultures effectively. Without naming specific nationalities, there are some general trends that can often be seen when working with teams from specific countries. This could seem like generalizing and not accounting for individualism, but everyone would admit that each nationality has their own common traits. Knowing when to push harder and when to give people a break, when to listen and when to direct, is something only experience can provide.

If you consider all the points mentioned and plan your work well, you should find that remote projects and tasks will deliver the results you desire.

Hiring offshore workers has become a popular trend for Australian businesses. There are many benefits for small businesses in Australia to hire workers that are offshore, such as financial reasons. People from across the globe are willing to work for a more affordable hourly rate because they are able to do work that they enjoy. Nearly anyone can work online as long as they have a reliable computer and an internet connection.

There are several different job opportunities online for offshore workers, such as data entry, customer service, web design, graphic design and blog writing. Not all of these positions need a college degree or specific skills. If you have basic typing skills and the willingness to learn, you can make money. The country of Australia uses many offshore workers because they do not have a large amount of work, which makes it pointless to hire people who live in their country.

Saving money is very important, especially if you have recently started your small business. Hiring offshore workers will save you a considerable amount of money and give you employees who will go above and beyond to make sure that you are satisfied with the work they complete. One great thing about working with offshore people is that you do not have to worry about health insurance, time cards, paying taxes for multiple employees or your employees showing up to work on time.

There are thousands of people online that would love to work for your company. If you find an employee that you do not work well with, it will not be hard to find someone else who will meet your standards. Many people worry about how they are going to communicate effectively with people from across the globe. The answer to this question is simple because there are several free messaging services available that are fast and reliable.

There are several websites online that will help you find dependable workers for your Australian business. These companies offer thorough background checks, detailed profiles and skill assessments. Most of these companies charge a small fee to use their services to help you find dependable employees. You must have a bank account that has enough money in it to pay your employees. A large majority of offshore workers will not work for a small business without an upfront payment. An upfront payment provides the person with peace of mind and the assurancethat you are willing to pay for the work completed for you.

Some Australians are against the use of offshore workers. The reason for this is because it creates fewer jobs for the Australians who need the extra income. Unemployed Australians can sign up for these websites and do the same work as the offshore workers. Freelance websites simply create more opportunities for people to work without the hassle of having to commute to a different place. The internet has created many options for people to advertise their valued business and create a brilliant team of dedicated workers.

Author: elev8_vc

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