Introduction
As a business leader, you always have a lot on your plate. You have to wear multiple hats throughout the day just to keep the business running smoothly. With all those responsibilities, delegating certain duties that don’t require your specific attention can help you manage your limited time more efficiently.
To that end, many business owners and managers hire full-time employees to take some of the tedious tasks off their plates. But if you are a small business or one with financial limitations, it may not be feasible to hire someone full-time. Positions such as copywriting, marketing, data mining, data entry, bookkeeping, or day-to-day administration could be effectively handled by part-time, remote staff.
According to a study, a virtual assistant can save you up to 78% on operating costs each year compared to a full-time employee. Therefore, hiring a part-timer or a virtual assistant can be an economical and efficient alternative.
While we have spoken about the many benefits of hiring a remote part-timer, it’s important to remember that it’s not going to be quite the same as hiring a full-time, in-house employee. Although there is some overlap between the two, there are a couple of things employers need to be aware of when outsourcing duties to contract/part-time workers. In this article, I’ll share a couple of essential details to get the most out of contract employment.
1. Personality and Values
Just as you would with a full-time employee, keep in mind how their personality and values are aligned with the role they’ll be filling, the team they’ll be working with, as well as your company.
For example, one candidate might have the personality of a diligent personal assistant but might not be very open and sociable with others in the company. They might prefer to stay aloof and stick to their work. This can lead to miscommunications, low trust levels among the team, and increased wariness of the new hire, which could delay your work further.
A part-timer’s personality should be assessed before hiring and should fit well within your company’s culture and the demands on their job to ensure a mutually beneficial working relationship. Any part-timer or virtual assistant needs to be someone with whom you can easily get along.
Simply because they are a remote worker doesn’t mean you won’t be interacting with them. On the contrary, you’ll likely interact with them daily, if not multiple times a day. Having your company values and culture in mind before hiring a part-timer can make the hiring process easier all around.
2. Onboarding and Training
Do you have a different training and onboarding process for part-time remote workers than you have for full-time, in-house employees? While it’s useful and necessary to provide different kinds of training for different roles, it’s important to note that all employees, regardless of their roles, need the same tools and basic onboarding to be successful in their jobs.
Let’s say you hire one full-time and one part-time content writer at the same time. You onboarded the full-timer with all the necessary knowledge of the history of the company, its goals, processes and rules, and equipped them with all the tools required for the role. But for the part-timer, you didn’t onboard them the same, thinking all they needed to do was write on a topic given to them.
This will eventually make the full-timer churn out more detailed, unique, and useful content as they possess all the skills and knowledge about your company’s ethos, your services, or products, while the part-timer will only be able to deliver basic content that may not be as robust as you want it to be.
If you want your part-time hire to do the job you hired them for effectively, don’t allow the quality of your training to differ between the two, even if the content is somewhat varied. Training and onboarding should be thorough and should give them a clear understanding of all the pertinent details like company culture, values, goals, and structure, as well as how to best perform their duties.
3. Duties and Expectations
To ensure your part-timer or contract worker gives their best, it is essential to make your expectations and their duties explicitly clear right from the screening stage. A part-timer is not in contact with you or your company as much as your full-timers. This limits your part-timer’s access to how the company works, how things are expected to be done, and how the team functions on certain duties. Therefore, if a part-timer does not have clear and open communication with you or your team about your expectations or their duties, they might not perform as well as you want them to.
Have a list of tasks and duties before starting the hiring process. You can do that by detailing all the activities and responsibilities you expect your in-house teams to handle and those you wish to be executed by your virtual assistant or another outsourced employee. This will not only narrow down your criteria while looking for new talent but also help you tell the part-timer clearly and precisely what you expect from them.
This way, you can ensure your part-timer understands what they are meant to do and delivers on your expectations. If you don’t do that, there is room for confusion and the possibility of unmet expectations. You’ll find yourself disappointed by their performance and they’ll be dissatisfied with their work. This brings me to the next point.
4. Clear and Effective Communication
Clear, effective communication is one of the best ways to make sure duties and expectations are clearly understood by everyone, especially part-timers and virtual assistants. Since part-timers are often remote, infrequent contact can become a barrier to effective performance of duties. That’s why it is essential to keep clear lines of communication between your team and your part-timers so there is minimal opportunity for misunderstandings.
Once you have your list of tasks and duties, you can disseminate it to the appropriate parties. Remember to choose your words deliberately so there is minimal room for misinterpretation. While working remotely, it is sometimes best to overcommunicate to get your point across clearly. Be concise with what you say and ensure the methods of communication between all parties are open and as welcoming as possible.
Be conscious of how face-to-face or verbal interactions may need to be dealt with differently. Video communication allows you to use body language to help convey your message whereas voice-only calls may require you to overcommunicate.
Explaining duties and responsibilities isn’t the only time you’ll need to interact with part-timers or virtual assistants. You’ll communicate with them daily or weekly to check status and progress, give suggestions/feedback, clarify doubts, etc. Online tools like Teams, Zoom, and Slack became especially popular during the pandemic for this reason. They allowed businesses to easily stay in touch with their employees remotely. You may find these or similar tools helpful in communicating effectively with offsite workers.
5. Project Management and Performance Tools
Communication tools aren’t the only systems you may need when working with virtual assistants. You need software for managing projects and performance as well. There are plenty of different options you can use to delegate tasks to your team members and track their progress. Online solutions like Trello, Asana, Toggl, Zoho Projects, etc. are popular choices today to help with task management and assignment, tracking billable and non-billable hours, keeping track of work progress, and more.
While each tool has its own features, benefits, pros and cons, you should keep in mind that not even the best tools can solve all your business challenges. Carefully review each one to find the most helpful for you, your processes, and your business.
Conclusion
Hiring a part-timer or virtual assistant can be a great way to reduce your workload so you can direct your focus to other tasks and areas of your business. If you choose to go this route, make sure you hire someone who is a good fit, give them the tools and training they need to succeed, clearly explain their duties and your expectations, be clear and concise in your communication with them, and use tools to help monitor their progress and performance. This will help everything go as smoothly as possible for all involved: you, your business, and your new hire.
Are you looking to outsource your staff or build your brand? GoGenies can help you hire experienced part-timers, contract workers, or virtual assistants from any part of the world to enhance your sales, marketing, or administrative teams at cost-effective rates. Click here to contact us today!
