Insights

Virtual Work: Its Bright Future Seems Evident Now

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If you have been aware of virtual work around a decade ago, you would think that it is nothing but a scam. Truth to be told, there are definitely a lot of offers online, which would lure you into doing some work in exchange with nothing. Many freelancers have definitely experienced loss during their initial year of working from home. Nonetheless, this does not signify what remote work really is – easier means of earning money. You just have to find the right job offer and you can find yourself getting a wage way higher than what your typical office job can give.

As time passed, more people came to appreciate the essence of remote work, not only freelancers but companies in need of staff as well. This is in conjunction with the advancement in technology. With more tools or software applications around making virtual work easier, it became more manageable for companies to take in online freelancers.

Simply imagine having employees that do not require your office space and will not even put you in tax jeopardy. This is indeed gold for many firms!

It has been predicted before that soon enough, almost every company will consider taking in home-based employees. If not, they would actually let their people work from home from time to time. Alas! It just occurred in the Philippines recently.

The President of the Republic of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has signed the law, Republic Act No. 1165 termed as Telecommuting Act, which provides the staff of private companies the privilege of working from home.

Under the said law, telecommuting refers to an arrangement wherein as an employee, you are allowed to use computer technologies and telecommunication at home as replacement to your typical office. It would be highly advantageous to the companies concerned as well. Why? This is due to the fact that they will not be required to even take care of the telecommuting arrangements.

Indeed, in the aforementioned setup, employees would still be mandated to report to the main office whenever necessary. Still, this is a big leap for virtual work in the Philippines.

There is more to look forward to in the near future. Simply consider the rise of more technologies for improved remote work. There are more conference and collaboration tools available today, either free or paid, which any company can integrate into their operations. These are applications that make remote work much easier. This only implies that the door for employee coordination regardless of the distance is wide open now.

According to HR Technologist’s exclusive interview to the CEO and Founder of Topia, Brynne Kennedy, the workforce will see more involvement of remove work and gig workers. Additionally, Kennedy even quoted “An effective talent mobility program and infrastructure will continue to be very important for companies to succeed in the future of work!”

With the undeniably mass acceptance to remote work, there are definitely more opportunities that await virtual assistants, freelancers, or gig workers like you. For certain, there is more means for you to be proud of being an online worker, which somehow been rebuffed before. Take pride in your work for definitely, you chose wisely to be part of the ever-evolving virtual work industry.

Why Setting Deadlines Matters for You and Your Virtual Assistant

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In the virtual assistance world, it is common that clients let their virtual assistants decide when to actually finish their work – somehow providing them this chance to be proactive and independent. Nonetheless, do you know that setting deadlines also have its considerable perks for both parties?

There are some cases that without a deadline, your expectations may not meet at all. You may suddenly need the work in a couple of days, whereas your virtual assistant has not been able to begin with the task given he or she thought it could wait for a week or so. This contradiction could be prevented with the help of deadlines. It is not a school type of rule, for it also conveys a lot of things ideal for your employer-employee relationship.

To give you ideas, provided below are facts supporting why deadlines matter for you and your virtual assistant:

Planning is being welcomed. Due to the lack of deadlines, the essence of planning is often disregarded. Remember, planning is highly detrimental to the success of a certain project. If your virtual assistant will not be provided ample time to plan out, things could end up with revisions or less than likely output for you or your firm.

If you will set deadlines, your virtual assistant could consolidate his or her other tasks with the concerned project. He or she may also outline his or her schedule efficiently in order to give way to the execution of activities needed. No more multitasking, which has been proven to be unexpectedly ineffective.

Late submissions are reduced. When you set deadlines, you have the power to make a submission earlier than needed. For instance, you need a presentation for the upcoming board meeting in four days. Instead of actually requiring your virtual assistant to deliver the presentation a day before the board meeting, you may simply give him or her two days to complete it. In other words, by the second day, he or she should have given you the work.

There will be no more procrastination on both ends. You can even pave way for revisions or changes since there is still a considerable time left for those.

Improved speed in production is being endorsed. Since you will limit the time your virtual assistant has to use in completing a task, you will also support him or her in increasing his or her pace in production. Whenever deadlines are absent, VAs tend to relax and set time limits according to their convenience. This is not a good thing for it closes the door for improvement.

The aforementioned three points prove that deadline, no matter how trivial it may sound for you, is totally necessary despite how trustworthy or reliable your virtual assistant is. It only takes a minute or less to decide when you need a certain work from your employee; definitely, it will not waste your time, but the contrary once you practice setting deadlines.

Ideal Changes to Aim in 2019

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New year is up ahead, and is simply waiting for you to make it a blast! You do not have to be intimidated at all, for you have the full power to make this year the best it can be; of course, according to how you want it to be. There may be tons of difficulties around, which may make you stumble and avoid you from spending the day gaily all the time, but this is simply normalcy.

Now, to make your 2019 better, why not aim for changes that will make you a better virtual assistant? If you want to succeed in the online freelancing industry, you got to perk up your profile, not only in terms of skills but also in personality.

To provide you ideas, given below are considerable changes to aim this year:

Better Communication Skills. Not all virtual assistants nowadays are good at communicating with their clients. Be reminded that if you want to keep up with the firm you are working for, you also have to convey yourself effectively and converse with people confidently. You got to show that despite the differences in your nationalities, there will be no barrier in terms of your communication.

How can you improve your communication skills? Try obtaining free English courses online, practicing it by taking advantage of conversations with your co-workers, and reading (regardless whether it is simply news or books).

More Positivity. There will always be conflicts when it comes to working, even online. However, this should not keep your visage sullen all the time. You should garner more positivity for yourself. In such way, you will be able to handle situations more effectively.

In actuality, it takes exercise to inhibit yourself from taking in negative energies whenever problems arise. Always remember that you should breathe first and think carefully before taking the next step, particularly when solutions are necessary.

Enforce yourself to believe that no matter what comes your way, everything will end up in your advantage.

Wider Set of Skills. A typical virtual assistant nowadays is not limited to two or more skills. In truth, one can be an administrative staff and a professional in web development at the same time. On the other hand, one can also be good at clerical work while having an exemplary background in graphic designing.

If you want to explore more opportunities online, you should try expanding your capabilities. You do not have to pay for paid training all the time. You can obtain informative materials online without a fee.

Boosted Independence. There are virtual assistants who are at times termed as “programmed” or “robotic.” Why? This is due to their extreme reliance on their clients in executing their tasks. Probably, it is time to change this for the better – by becoming independent through infusing proactive attitude in your personality.

Always remember that clients prefer someone they can depend on instead of the other way around. By showing them that you could do things your way, you can obtain their trust easily and effectively.

It is all about understanding the needs of your clients better. For instance, you can begin studying how their operations work on a day-to-day basis. This can be carried out slowly. A preemptive perspective will definitely be yours if you do this, especially now that aside from understanding what is needed, you can also predict possible issues going forward.

More Reliance on God (apparently, most relevant of all). Do you know that no matter how good you think you are, you will not be able to do whatever you want to do without God? God makes it possible for you to become a successful person or someone who is capable of becoming one.

Instead of always depending on your skills, rely on Him. Now is the time to pray first before acting out. It is also the year to show God that without Him, you are nothing.

Hopefully, the aforementioned ideal changes to aim this year could be in your resolution list as well. Becoming a better virtual assistant starts by making a decision to be one.

Setting Reasonable Expectations With Your Virtual Assistant

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As someone who hired a virtual assistant, you should be aware of your boundaries when dealing with them. Indeed, they are totally flexible compared to the office-based workers you have in your firm at present, but remember that they are still humans that deserve to be treated with due consideration.

There should be no discrepancy in terms of dealing with either remote or office worker. They also get tired, their skills may be limited to certain fields, and you cannot push them to produce something unimaginable or time will not allow.

One good situation to explain the aforementioned thought is this:

Anna just hired a social media manager for her accounts, specifically on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The virtual assistant or the person, whom she assigned the tasks to, is Julie. Indeed, Julie has this relevant experience in marketing via social media platforms. However, Anna set an impossible goal: Julie must see to it that with one hour every day, her social media accounts have at least one fresh post. Furthermore, the VA must be able to engage with people on her account.

The end result? Julie appeared to have failed the expectations of Anna although she deserves to be provided with more hours to prove her skills.

What Anna asked for is totally unachievable, given the fact social media posts may be easily lodged onto someone’s account, but it does not mean that these only take minutes to be created. Be reminded that creating content for social media accounts requires careful research, analysis of one’s industry, consideration of the target audience, determination of the client’s wants for the posting, content writing, and graphic design. Apparently, these tasks will never take an hour.

Also, engaging with people on one’s account will not last a few minutes at all. There are cases that inquiries may even call for coordination with the management itself or other departments of the firm. For instance, the questions are relative to products or services on hand, which the Virtual Assistant may not be able to respond to accordingly without further confirmation of information.

Be reminded that when setting expectations with your virtual assistant, it is best to have a meeting with him or her and clarify things out. For instance, you could ask the VA to give you an estimate of hours for the work completion. To be assured that you are not being led on (i.e. for the VA to acquire more hours than necessary), require a concrete explanation on how the hours will be spent.

You will know that a virtual assistant is telling the truth based on how they give details on their steps. They will certainly provide you with specific activities entailed on the task you have given and their corresponding required time.

From this perspective, you can see that setting expectations is also accompanied by trust – trust that your virtual assistant will work accordingly without spending more time when not necessary.

Importance of Setting a Schedule With Your Client

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There are a lot of problems arising when there is no consistency or set of standards followed when working with a client. As a virtual assistant, you should remember that at times, it is you, who should be taking the first step in ensuring problems will come out of a lack of organization. One good example is when you do not agree upon a schedule with your client.

It is true that there are virtual assistants who tend to work on a flexible schedule. It does work for some, but there are instances, it will not.

One good way of explaining this is with an example situation:

Imogen and Claire just started working last week. The former is the client in this circumstance, wherein Claire is the virtual assistant. Apparently, Imogen complained about not getting responses from Claire via their chosen messaging platform last Friday. However, when Claire’s side was obtained, it was found out that she already worked beyond her hours, which is four hours per day. It is also added that Claire informed Imogen that she will be starting her work at 9:00 A.M. PST, but the client is complaining of not having a response by night time at 10:00 P.M. PST.

After further investigation, Imogen has been used to sending messages to Claire almost the whole day from Monday to Thursday, while the virtual assistant has no complaint in attending to it. In other words, the client got used to getting replies and at one time, she did not receive one, she already panicked.

If you will analyze the situation above, it is apparent that lack of schedule could result in unnecessary complaints and unfair treatment to the virtual assistant (though this is not the intention of the client). There must be a boundary all the time, and the best solution is a strict schedule to follow. In such way, the client will be aware that the virtual assistant is obligated to respond during her working hours. On the other hand, he or she has the freedom not to respond to client’s inquiries not until her next shift.

Clients should be aware that a virtual assistant is not a round-the-clock employee. They may work in a flexible manner, but they also have the right to obtain some hours of personal privacy away from work.

Of course, virtual assistants, most of the time, should initiate setting up a schedule. It is one way of protecting one’s self from the aforementioned issue. One cannot blame the clients all the time, for once you get them adapt to a certain routine, they will definitely anticipate it to occur going forward.