This economic impact of minimum wage hikes to phase in over the next six years (2022) has also met opposition from business groups who claim that it would reduce employment opportunities for low-skilled Americans.

However, some economists argue that businesses can still adjust for higher costs through improved productivity at work, reduced turnover, and price increases.

One of the ways to cut on labor cost is to utilize and hire an online remote worker or virtual assistant (VA) for businesses and professionals.

Using a #VA is a cost-effective solution—saves you 70% on labor cost.
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Think about it. VAs don’t need your office space, power, or equipment because they are working from their homes. Plus, you get rid of the need for payroll taxes, overtime and vacation pay, health insurance, and other employee benefits.

Outsourcing your business processes not only reduces your own costs but also your workload, increase your sales, and gain more customers. Virtual assistants can handle back-office tasks for as low as eight bucks per hour depending on skills and experience.

Tasks VAs Can Help You With:

• customer service
• appointment setting, telemarketing, sales
  administrative or personal assistant
• real estate agent / investors assistants
• accounting, bookkeeping, QuickBooks
• online marketing (social media, SEO, ads posting – Craigslist, etc.)
• web design, programming, web maintenance, system administration
• transcriptionists
• create marketing materials – videos, flyers, newsletters, promos, etc.

Now that the cost of labor is so high, it would likely be very difficult to run a profitable business for the years to come. The $15-per-hour minimum wage sure provides raise to some workers, but also puts businesses at a disadvantage.

As Michael Saltsman, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, stated:  “When you talk about these really massive jumps it’s no longer an impact at the margin, it’s the sort of thing that could be the difference between a business staying open and closing.”

As the minimum wage escalates year after year, it will be harder for employers to afford to pay workers. In order to survive,

Businesses need to be smart in hiring workers w/out sacrificing quality output.
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References:
www.ibtimes.co.uk
www.ibtimes.co.uk
abcnews.go.com

“5/4/2010: To-Do List” by John.schultz is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

(1) Time
Clients choose to hire a Virtual Assistant, because they are out of time. Although time management experts will point out that a day has always been made up of 24 hours, with the fast pace by which the world is moving, there are things that you simply need to do NOW or should have done yesterday! You need to be quick in order to gain a competitive advantage.

Our clients delegate vital operational activities to their VA. Activities that the business needs to keep running but should not necessarily be done by the client himself.

These activities include administrative tasks such as:

• Preparing company documents
• Entering information into the company database
• Customer service
• Responding to incoming phone calls, emails or chats
• Contacting leads and other contacts
• Setting up appointments

Taking off these time consuming tasks from the clients’ “plate” allows them to focus on other areas that the business needs such as nurturing relationships with clients, suppliers and other business stakeholders, as well as other business development activities.

(2) Cost
Having a virtual admin assistant is more cost-effective than having an in-house or on-site staff, because it takes away overhead costs. In fact, in the article 3 ways to Take Advantage of the Virtual Workforce by Forbes Magazine, they revealed an increase in the number of staff who have adopted telecommuting in the United States.

Despite the announcements of big companies like Yahoo and Best Buy that they will cease to offer work from home options to staff, many companies in the United States still continue to offer this as an option because of the apparent savings that it generates.

Another distinct advantage of having an employee working offshore or remotely from countries like the Philippines is the exchange rate and the difference in the cost of living.

At $7.20 – $13 per hour (which is the cost of our SuperPro Packages) you will be getting a highly skilled and experienced online worker, while giving a competitive salary package that they will not normally get in local companies – even in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or call center industry.

Having a remote staff allows our clients to meet the 2 points of the Project Management triangle – Time and Cost, which leads us to the third point in the triangle: Quality.

The determining factor in selecting a virtual personal assistant or online outsourcing company to entrust your business with depends on the quality of work that they provide.

With all the options that are available these days, finding one is just a click away, so it is very important for you to be aware of your options and most importantly, what YOU can do in order for your VA relationship to be an effective one.

This leads us to:

VATip #1: Create a To-Do List

Creating a To-Do List for your remote worker sounds easy enough, but it’s something that, we have found, most clients have difficulty with.

This is something that we help our clients in determining even prior to endorsing or recommending our virtual team for interview, because it sets the pace for the entire project.

One thing that we have noticed about the online outsourcing or work from home industry is that it has a tendency to take away certain inhibitions and practices from both clients and home-based staff alike. This is why we keep a very process-driven approach with how we handle our clients and team.

Just like in a regular office or corporate setting, we are governed by certain guidelines and processes, which keep order within the company and this all starts with your basic to-do list!

Look at your To-Do List

Before you even start writing your list, take a look at your own personal to-do list. From your list, transfer the tasks that usually eat up a lot of your time to a list of tasks that can be delegated to someone else.

While doing this, you will most likely have an argument with yourself as you will find yourself asking things like, “…but I will need to give access to this. Is it safe?” or “I may need to train them on this.” or “Can they even do this?”

But before you even entertain these thoughts, just…

Focus on tasks you want to get off your plate & write them down.
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The Urgency/Important Matrix

If it is your first time working with a virtual executive assistant, we recommend delegating some basic tasks to kick off your working relationship.

One of the main advantages of the Virtual Assistant Talent packages is that we offer part time engagements for as low as 10 hours per week. This drives us to earn our clients’ trust in order for them to increase their hours and delegate more tasks to us.

With these types of engagements, we recommend delegating tasks that fall under the Urgent and Important quadrant or parameters of the Urgency/Important Matrix or what is also known as the Time Management Matrix.

Focusing on these types of tasks will definitely help you out by giving you more time to develop your business model and see what other tasks can be outsourced.

Seek expert advice

Once you have put together your list, talk to someone—but not just anyone. Talk to someone who has had experience working with VAs before or better yet, call us!

The Virtual Assistant Talent team takes the time to help out clients put together a task list as this helps us in creating a job description and minimum skill requirement to endorse only home-based employees who are capable of fulfilling the tasks and responsibilities you need.

About VATip

Virtual Assistant Tips or our VATips are meant to provide our existing clients, those who are currently working with a virtual team and those who are thinking about having a VA in understanding how to best utilize their virtual resources.