subject: Establishing An Effective Working Relationship With A Virtual Assistant [print this page] Some companies are hesitant to hire virtual assistants because they are unsure if they can work well with VAs. One of the first things you should do when you hire a virtual assistant is to change your mindset regarding delegating tasks. It's easy to obsesses and stress out over the littlest details of your business operations especially if you're used to doing everything yourself. When you hire a virtual assistant, you just need to choose the best virtual assistance company you can find online and then trust that the VA will do an outstanding job when you finally assign tasks to the assistant. Hiring the best virtual assistant is the first step into getting the most out of VA services. If you hire a VA company with a questionable reputation and then hound the VA while he or she is working because you're not sure the VA can deliver the results you want then you are creating a stressful working environment for everyone.
The next thing you should remember when delegating tasks (and this applies to all workers and not just virtual office assistants) is to give very clear instructions to workers. You need to be clear about your expectations and the output you require from your assistants. Virtual assistants are trained to work with minimal supervision but instructions and expectations must be very clear to them.
You should also set reasonable expectations. Virtual assistants are skilled, tech-savvy and very efficient but it doesn't mean that you should high ridiculously high expectations that are not humanly possible to achieve. Before you hire a virtual assistant you should know which tasks you want to delegate to the VA and which tasks you would want to continue to work on yourself. This will help you determine how many hours you need a VA to work for you.
Keep the communication lines open between you and the virtual assistant. This way you can easily reach the VA when you have additional requests or special instructions. This will also help the VA reach you if he or she needs to clarify anything.
Treat your virtual assistant as if the person is your full-time employee. Although there is no need to provide your VA with the full-range of benefits and all the other perks to retain his or her services, you should extend the same level of respect you would extend a regular employee.
