There are times when a business owner has to decide whether it’s better for their business to hire in-house employees vs. Virtual Assistants to steer the enterprise towards success. At times, the choice is easy, and at times it’s hard, but to make the hard choices, you need to look facts in the face and weigh the pros against the cons.
Employee
An employee is the general designation for anyone who works for any business or company. Since they’ve been working in more or less the same fashion for thousands of years, they’re familiar with how a job works. Of course things like fair wages and unionizing have manifested in the last few centuries, but things have almost always remained the same.
Hence, loyal employees can assist your business by working hard and giving in the extra hours when it really counts. On the other hand, disloyal employees can cost you your business and their attitude can sometimes completely be the opposite of what is expected and they can harm your profits and your work environment significantly.
For the longest time, however, there wasn’t much choice when it came to hiring them since they were the lifeblood of any business. However, the process of outsourcing and delegating the job to an Independent Contractor or a company has now become a viable option. Virtual Assistants are standing by to help ease your workload and fulfill it better and faster than your employees can.
Virtual Assistant
Virtual Assistants are just another link in the chain of efficiency in the modern economy. Efficiency has been improving ever since the invention of machines which have helped humans carry out tasks that would take hours of manpower to accomplish. This happened during both the industrial revolution and the electric revolution which occurred in the twentieth century. During the later stages, computers came along and helped tasks become much faster still, and now artificial intelligence and the internet are making that even faster. Hence, it’s much easier to outsource tasks out to virtual assistants that are well versed in that field rather than having an employee learn it imperfectly on site.
Virtual Assistants can do a lot of things your employees can do, but in a more efficient and quick manner. Not only that, they can outpace your employees at tasks that require high cognitive skills and beat them at their own game by spotting insights in data that your employees would probably miss. It’s because they’ve been trained to do this while your employees have not. Virtual Assistants also focus on the task at hand and deliver within the window given; hence, they’re running on a deadline that your employee may not necessarily abide by while in the office environment.
However, the downsides to virtual assistants can be identified as well. They can sometimes not be available on-call and you may not be able to reach them as easily over the phone or email. On the other hand, your employee may be able to give 100% of their time to you.
The benefits of having a virtual assistant can sometimes be outweighed by the negatives when you factor in the fact that virtual assistants may not exactly tailor their work to your requirements. An employee that has stayed in-house with you for months or years know what you need, however a Virtual Assistant who has just come on board may not.
Costs
The costs of hiring an employee entails paying a salary, social security, health benefits, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, etc. However, none of that comes to light when you outsource work with a virtual assistant. Virtual Assistants need only get paid for tasks assigned to them and don’t require any benefits on top of that. They also don’t require the investment of desks, computers and their own workstation so that they may deliver. All that is required is the deposit of money and delegation of projects/assignments.
Employees are also paid regardless of whether they’ve completed tasks and get stern warnings and at maximum, a firing after repeated offenses. That can cost a company quite a lot of money in unfulfilled orders. However, a Virtual Assistant has the ability to stay on schedule and complete tasks regardless of paid salaries and doesn’t need any stern warnings or talking to.
Specialized Skills
Employees with general skills are a dime a dozen, but those with specific skills and optimum levels of performance don’t exactly grow on trees. They are hard to find and need to be paid top dollar to stay on. However, when you outsource work to a Virtual Assistant, you will be assigned to one that is specialized for the work that you want and will not need any training or explaining to.
Commitment
This might sound hyperbolic, but a Virtual Assistant is probably more committed to the idea of a company than an employee is. The Virtual Assistant doesn’t care whether the company values it or not and doesn’t need to believe in its vision in order to put in its best work. The Virtual Assistant will not only deliver on the work the best that it can, but it will also not need to be inspired by the company in order to complete an order on time the way that employees do.
Thinking about hiring a Virtual Assistant for your business, helping you achieve business goals, increase productivity, decrease expenses and help save you valuable time? Contact Us Today!
Join the Conversation