Category: Top Tips

A few weeks ago we brought you our ultimate guide to online entertainment, to help you beat the boredom during lockdown. Today we’re back with a new edition – for kids!

The latest government announcement made some changes to the UK’s state of lockdown, including allowing for more time spent outdoors. However, schools remain closed and many people are still working from home, meaning that parents continue to face a big challenge: how to keep children entertained.

If you’re running out of ideas for fun things for your kids to do, look no further! We’ve put together our ultimate guide to online fun, so you can keep your children happy, healthy and entertained.

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Since lockdown turned us all into homeworkers, some of us are putting in longer hours at home than when we worked in an office. This is an interesting phenomenon, but not a healthy one. In the long run, productivity and work/life balance are more important than how many hours you spend at your desk. In this blog, we look at why working crazy hours is bad news, and what we can do to keep work under control.

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The UK has been under lockdown for several weeks now, and for very good reason. We are staying at home to protect the vulnerable and the keyworkers, and while there are many parts of lockdown life that are difficult to deal with, we are very fortunate to live in a connected, online age that allows us talk to our loved ones and support each other during this difficult time.

For many of us, one of the main things to deal with during lockdown is boredom, but thanks to the creativity and ingenuity of countless people, and the wonders of the internet, there are all sorts of things we can do to stay entertained. So, to help you beat the boredom, we’ve put together a bumper guide of fun things to do online! For many of us, one of the main things to deal with during lockdown is boredom, but thanks to the creativity and ingenuity of countless people, and the wonders of the internet, there are all sorts of things we can do to stay entertained. So, to help you beat the boredom, we’ve put together a bumper guide of fun things to do online! For many of us, one of the main things to deal with during lockdown is boredom, but thanks to the creativity and ingenuity of countless people, and the wonders of the internet, there are all sorts of things we can do to stay entertained. So, to help you beat the boredom, we’ve put together a bumper guide of fun things to do online!

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Amanda Johnson, business coach, mentor and trainer, is bringing us her advice about how to onboard a new virtual assistant in your business. Her award-winning VA business, VACT, was established in 2003, and she has been in the industry since 2012, so she has plenty of great advice to share!

I love helping business owners find virtual assistants (VAs), and people often ask me how to onboard new VAs as smoothly and effectively as possible. In this blog I’ll look at the onboarding process from the business owner’s perspective and share my advice with you.

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The best thing we can all do right now, to stay safe and slow the spread of coronavirus, is to stay indoors as much as possible. However, this can have an effect on our mental health – being unable to go outside, being isolated from friends and family, and feeling uncertain about what the next few months will hold. Indeed, a number of mental health charities have already reported that this crisis has led to an increase in cases of anxiety.*

Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to protect and nurture your mental health during this time. Here are 5 key things you can do to stay happy and mentally healthy during lockdown – all without leaving the house!

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A little while ago, we were invited to a celebration lunch with one of our clients. During the lunch, the company’s marketing manager told us she had been approached by the Sunday Telegraph who wanted to do a piece about them. The marketing manager was delighted that the VAs had created such a wealth of blogs and factsheets for her to draw on – all she had to do was copy and paste the right paragraphs and send them off to the journalist. We were delighted too – it’s this kind of repurposing that makes content marketing great value for money, as well as empowering our clients to take their own action.

Even if you haven’t been approached by a Sunday paper (!) it’s still a great idea to repurpose your blogs, factsheets, ebooks and social media posts.

Here are some of our favourite ideas:

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If you’re new to working from home, you might be finding it tricky to switch into ‘work mode’ when there are a thousand things to distract you – the kids, the washing up, the hoovering, the cat that just has to sit on your keyboard.

Here at Get Ahead VA, we know all about the challenges (and the joys!) of working from home, and we’ve got plenty of tips to help you minimise distractions and stay productive. So if you’re struggling with this new style of working, here are 7 top tips to help you adjust.

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We are now in our second week of lockdown in the UK, and everybody is still adjusting to the ‘new normal’. Because schools and many workplaces are now closed, a major part of life in lockdown is learning how to share space with the other people in your house, for longer than you would on a typical day. This can be tricky at the best of times, let alone at a time of major disruption and uncertainty, so we have some advice to help you and your family through. Here are our 5 top tips for sharing space during self-isolation.

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There’s no getting away from the news at the moment – the coronavirus pandemic is making headlines everywhere, and more and more countries are taking measures to slow the spread of this flu-like disease.

At time of writing, the UK government has not closed schools. However, Boris Johnson has advised that anybody who can work from home should do so, and he has also recommended against public gatherings in places such as pubs and theatres. Given the measures already in place, it seems likely that the schools may close, in which case children will be joining their parents at home for the foreseeable future.

Here at Get Ahead VA, we are very fortunate to have a team of experienced home-workers, many of whom also have children, and so they have a wealth of advice to share about juggling work and family under the same roof. So if you’re concerned about how you’ll handle the next few weeks, don’t worry. Here are our top tips about working from home with your kids.

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It won’t have escaped your notice that coronavirus is having a huge effect on businesses, with direct implications for the retail and travel sectors. And as you’ll know if you manage a team of office-based staff, the effect of self-isolation is becoming apparent too. As more people choose to self-isolate, more team leaders are finding themselves having to manage people working from home, which can be a new experience, and not always an easy one.

Virtual assistants nearly always work from home. I’ve been managing my team of virtual assistants for nearly a decade – a lot of what I’ve learned may help other businesses as workplaces are forced to flex around coronavirus.

Here are my top tips:

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