What are the financial advantages of working with a virtual assistant?
There are lots of ways in which working with virtual assistants makes sense, like freeing you up from mundane tasks to concentrate on your core business, or mixing and matching skills to create the ultimate team. But for all business owners, money is the bottom line. We firmly believe that VAs are a cost effective way of tapping into a wealth of experience and high quality work.
Here’s why:
1. Only pay for completed work
Imagine you have a one-off project. Maybe you’re changing the way you provide a service to your clients or customers and you need someone with a good phone manner to make courtesy calls to inform everyone. It’s only a week’s work, but “a week’s work” is a relative term. You could get a temp to come and make phone calls for you for one week (and pay temp agency prices – ouch!). You’d be paying your temp not only to make the phone calls as per the brief, but also to take tea breaks and lunch breaks, not to mention chat in the kitchen, compose their birthday list on Amazon, call up the insurance company because the car’s had a prang and all the other things that people shouldn’t do at work but end up doing anyway. A 40-hour working week might just be twenty hours’ work with a lot of downtime.
But when a VA works for you, you only pay them for the time when they are working. Our VAs keep time sheets and make a note of how much time they spend on the work for you, and invoice accordingly. When you look at it this way, you’ll see the calls would take less than the 40-hr working week, saving you money. The VA will catch up with friends in their own time, not yours!
2. No additional costs
We’ve seen that when you work with a VA, you only pay for completed work, but that’s not the only saving. Because your VA works remotely, there are none of the additional costs and financial responsibilities you have towards people on your own payroll. You are not responsible for pensions, statutory sick pay or annual leave, and you are not expected to make a redundancy payment when the work comes to an end. That’s quite a saving!
3. No recruitment costs
Recruiting permanent employees is expensive and time-consuming. In addition to the costs of recruitment agencies or HR consultants, you also have advertising to pay for, and the revenue lost when you’re taken away from your core business for CV sifting and job interviews.
But once you’ve established a relationship with a VA agency, we will find the best VA for you, or you can ask for the same VA you worked with last time. When you use a VA, your recruitment costs are zero.
4. Save on business premises
By outsourcing to VAs, you save on the cost of a business premises because you don’t have to provide desk space, a staff room, kitchen or coffee machine. A VA usually works from home, at the comfort of their own desk, making cups of tea in their own kitchen.
5. Speedy onboarding
When you take on a new recruit, they are unlikely to start adding value to your business straightaway. Some employees arrive with the right skills, aptitude and potential, but they have yet to learn your specific industry. VAs, on the other hand, are used to taking on new jobs and slotting into different sectors quickly. This means that the work they do will have an immediate impact on your business.
As we all look to a more flexible approach to working, the financial benefits of working with VAs instead of temps or permanent employees stand out a mile. If it’s time you started saving money by outsourcing to virtual assistants, get in touch today on 01483 332 220 – we’d love to hear from you.
