Recent technological upgrades have made it possible for businesses to outsource some tasks to remote workers located anywhere across the globe. With the emergence of COVID-19 and the need to cut down on operational costs hiring remote workers is now both a trend and a norm for all businesses regardless of their size. If you are overloaded with work and you are not ready to recruit more in-house employees, you might explore the benefits of hiring virtual workers. Virtual employees offer the best solution for a myriad of jobs.
What is a virtual worker?
A virtual employee is like your regular employee who works for your organization. However, instead of coming into your physical location, virtual workers provide their services remotely. The virtual worker operates from their home office but can access crucial planning documents, including shared calendars, remotely. Virtual employees’ everyday tasks include scheduling appointments, making phone calls, managing email and social media accounts, and making travel arrangements. As working from home becomes more acceptable to workers and employers, the demand for skilled virtual employees is set to grow.
The top 7 benefits of a virtual employee
Here are the top 7 benefits of hiring a virtual employee:
Saves you money
The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened prospects for many businesses and if you are looking for ways to save on costs and emerge from the crisis unscathed, consider hiring virtual employees. Hiring regular employees is quite costly, and apart from their salary and benefits, you will have to worry about government compliance issues.
There are several ways to save money with virtual employees. For one, you will need less space and fewer employees to worry about on your payroll and benefits schemes. Hiring remotely also enables you to cut down on the cost of buying new office equipment and work tools such as computers and telephones. Fewer in-house employees in the office also mean lighter expenditure on utilities such as water and electricity bills.
Frees up your time
As a business owner or company manager, many things compete for your attention, and there is a real chance of ignoring less urgent but essential tasks. A virtual employee will help you handle these tasks to focus your valuable time and energy on complex and sensitive work that only YOU do best. Some of the routine office tasks to outsource include organizing and management of emails, booking appointments, scheduling meetings, answering calls, and management of your social media accounts
Opportunity to Scale your business
Working with virtual employees comes with a lot of flexibility. If you need more help for a seasonal demand or rush job, instead of hiring permanent employees, consider hiring a VA whom you only engage when a need arises. In the future, should there be a need to cut the labor cost to improve margins, it will be much easier to let go of remote employees than a permanent one. Generally, hiring a VA is a good strategy for scaling your business upwards or downwards without incurring huge costs.
Access to a global talent pool
Recruiting virtual workers gives you a chance to create a small team of highly qualified, competent, and effective professional individuals. When you hire virtually, you access a larger pool of talented employees located from anywhere in the world than when you hire from within.
Notably, you have a leeway to handpick the right employees to form a crack team to run your day-to-day tasks and special projects. With the right technological tools, you will find it much easier to coordinate, manage, collaborate, and communicate with your team for better results.
Higher retention rate
A trained virtual worker is an employee in every sense of the word. As with your other employees, it is only natural to worry about their retention. The retention rate of a VA is much higher when compared to that of the in-house employees. Once you offer your virtual worker training and establish a good working rapport, their chances of leaving you for another employer are relatively minimal. Besides, they also enjoy a flexible working schedule that allows them to work with more than one employer.
Boon for startups
If you are a startup, it makes more sense to hire remote workers than permanent employees. You will hire VAs at a fraction of the cost of full-time employees and thus cut down on costs to advance quickly to profitability. Your team of professionals who collaborate remotely helps you avoid paying hefty salaries, office leases, benefits, and d sick leaves, all of which would otherwise affect your bottom line as a startup.
Opportunity to hire your next great employee
If you have been in business for a long, you probably know how difficult it is to get the right talent for permanent positions. Most companies are always looking for the right personalities who have the right skills, attitude, and motivation to get work done quickly and efficiently. When you hire a VA for a temporary task, you get a chance of meeting the right talent whom you may consider hiring permanently in the future. Most savvy business owners first worked with VA, with whom they quickly built a thriving professional relationship that gives room to upgrade the employees to higher company positions. In a nutshell, hiring virtually allows you to test the working relationship before committing to a permanent hire.
Key Takeaway
Imagine how much better your work-life and business would run if you had a qualified virtual employee to help you with mundane day-to-day roles in the background. If you are a small business, consider hiring a VA to benefit from a flexible workforce, lower overhead costs, and streamlined business operations. If you need help hiring an ideal VA, contact Zirtual. Zirtual features a top-notch recruiting platform that matches employers with highly talented remote workers.