3 Advantages to Outsourcing With an Agency
When most executives realize they need help, their instinct is to try and find an executive assistant that can support them in person. However, in-house employees are not always the most productive option. You can find a high-value and productive return on investment with virtual assistants, particularly those hired through a credible agency.
Outsourcing to a virtual assistant instead of hiring in-house staff
You’ll spend less with an outsourced virtual assistant than with hiring a W2 employee. Employers incur an additional 30% of an employee’s salary in overhead costs, on average. Even if your staff works from home, you still cover various overhead and payroll expenses. Outsourcing allows you to avoid these costs and pay one entity for support.
There’s flexibility in the workload with a virtual assistant. Typically, VAs are paid on retainers for a certain amount of hours in a month or paid later for actual hours worked, allowing you to take advantage of part-time, contracted support. It is often unlikely that there are 40 hours of real work to justify the need for a full-time, in-house assistant
There’s less risk and a lower replacement cost with virtual assistants. While virtual assistants do need time to understand your processes and systems, the overall training time is less and there is no need to fully integrate them into your team. If a VA is no longer part of your team, there’s less financial hurt than when losing an in-house employee.
Choosing an agency instead of a freelanced-VA
Agencies eliminate the need to recruit, hire, and train an assistant as they have their own hiring and vetting process to provide you with qualified assistants. When hiring a freelancer, you’ll need to post your own job, filter through candidates, interview, hire, and figure out your own onboarding.
Assistants in an agency are backed by a team to help them overcome challenges, expand on their skill sets, and have fill-in backup when they go on vacations. Freelancers offer a more limited skill set and when they are on vacation (which is not limited by PTO days or other employee-contracted limitations), you have no backup support.
Agencies provide management oversight to their assistants to help them avoid difficult conversations and ensure quality support service. Freelancers do not report to anyone and can therefore have more fluctuations in the quality of service offered.
In the end, in-house employees and freelance VAs have their own advantages. Typically these hiring options will work best for those that have high-volume workloads that may constitute 40-hour work weeks or for managers that prefer more oversight and control over their staff.
If you’re looking for easy recruiting, lowered overhead costs, and a less stressful management requirement, then a virtual assistant with an agency may be a viable solution for your needs.