She called in sick the 1st day, late on her 2nd day and on her 3rd day, she had to be fired. These scenarios are what we don’t want to happen when we hire our own virtual assistant. Our expectations are high after hearing all the wonderful things about working with virtual assistants. The question is, how do we really manage our Virtual Assistant virtually? There would probably be millions of ways on how to manage VAs, here are the basic and popular ones. 

COMMUNICATION

Nowadays, the help of technology can make it easier to communicate with people despite being separated by distance. You need to make sure that you and your VA have a clear flow of communication despite the distance. You need to ensure that you can communicate properly. Establish a fixed schedule to communicate with each other like creating a daily “check-in” session to update about work progress. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation, 5-10 minutes should cover everything.

EXPECTATIONS

Set your expectations on day one. VAs are humans. They are not fortune-tellers. Treat your VA like an in-person employee by providing them with a very clear, detailed job description. It is important for you to layout some basic expectations like the amount of time they should spend in finishing a task, or even how they should work to finish a task. Without direction, VAs “may end up trying it their own way,” which can turn out badly. It might seem like micromanaging, but it is necessary to be done to avoid any misunderstandings and disappointments. Once you have set the expectations between you and your VA, you can also easily rate their work during the evaluation process.

GOALS

Setting goals is basic advice. It’s simple. It’s obvious. Everybody knows how to do it, except that not everyone is doing it right. Setting your goals will not only help you but also help your VA. Set a SMART goal for your VA. A SMART goal means that the goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. A good example of a SMART goal is telling your VA that you want to have 10 blog posts, each consists of 1000 words, to be written each day for the next week. This can help your VA to work effectively, rather than just telling them that you want them to write blog posts this week. You’ve clearly identified a target number and set a time-frame to achieve the goal. That’s a good start! You need to be able to change and improve your plan as you go. Set SMART goals, execute, learn, and adjust.

I hope that helps and good luck working with your own Virtual Assistant.

If you still do not have one but feel that you are overwhelmed with work, we are just an email away. Let us show you how you can take off those tedious load so you can have more time with income-generating activities.