Your employees work hard for your company. Yet, giving them great benefits packages, paid holidays, vacation time, and bonuses don’t seem to be enough.
They’re still over-worked, stressed, and sometimes non-productive.
This is a problem many businesses face, even with their best workers. Stats reveal that employee productivity is on the decline. This confuses some organizations that have done a lot to promote efficiency and productivity.
When you look closer at the problem, you’ll find that highly engaged employees tend to have higher productivity levels (38% higher). Yet, many employees today don’t feel engaged.
Roughly 70% of American workers feel this way.
We also see that the highest performing workers take breaks from their tasks. The top 10% take a 17-minute break after 52 minutes of work.
When you do the math, they’re taking a break for 30% of the workday and are still putting in high numbers.
What does all of this tell us? That employees need breaks and need to be highly engaged with their work. But how can you make this happen if they’re constantly distracted with mundane tasks?
This is where virtual assistants come in. Having VAs onboard to help with smaller, tedious tasks can help free up time so your teams can focus and get engaged. Plus, they’ll have time to take more frequent breaks.
If you’re wondering what type of things remote virtual assistants can help you with, then continue reading!
If you’re a smaller business without a dedicated finance department, then you know how time-consuming it is to manage your finances. You have to record and categorize all of your revenue and expenses.
Then when tax season comes around, you have to delve through it all to accurately report your profits and losses. If you don’t get this right, you risk getting audited by the IRS.
With the help of a virtual assistant, you’re able to get assistance with all aspects of your finances. This includes bookkeeping, accounting, and taxes.
They’ll help you keep tabs on all of your bills to ensure you’re not spending more than you have. Virtual assistants are also able to manage all of your invoices.
There are platforms you can use to make it easier to track all of the payments owed to you by clients. This includes managing those that are unpaid and past due. Virtual assistants can be tasked with reaching out to these clients to see when a payment will be made.
You’ll be surprised to learn how many small businesses battle with late invoice payments. Stats show small- and medium-sized businesses across the world have $3 trillion worth of late payments.
Roughly 30% aren’t chasing down these clients to get their payment. It could be due to not having the time or the know how to do so.
By having someone manage your invoices can ensure a higher chance of being paid on time.
The internet has made it a whole lot easier to conduct research on just about anything – for free. Yet, it takes up a ton of time to do it right.
In business, there’s a lot you have to look up in order to perform tasks. For instance, you may need to research what competitors are doing that you aren’t to help gain a larger share of the market.
Or maybe you need a SWOT analysis to identify weaknesses in the marketplace you can capitalize on. There are all sorts of research you can conduct online regarding products and services, finding another building to lease or purchase for expansion purposes and more.
Then you may need assistance with content marketing. This requires careful research into the target audience, possible topics to cover, and platforms and sites to publish your content to.
A virtual assistant can handle all of this for you – just be sure to provide a thorough set of instructions to ensure you get the exact information you need.
Afterward, you can have the VA craft the research into a clear PowerPoint presentation summarizing key findings. This can be used for a meeting or for your own personal use, such as when writing an e-book or report.
It can also be turned into content you can share online on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Slideshare.
Managing and updating spreadsheets with new information is tedious indeed. It’s not something you or your workers look forward to doing.
And it can eat up too much of your workday. You may need to insert information regarding a customer’s change of address and contact details.
Or you may want to insert information from business cards you collected recently at a local networking event. Your CRM is a critical tool and demands up-to-date and accurate details to be of any use to your business.
Data entry is a task that requires close attention to detail and accuracy. Hiring a virtual assistant who specializes in data entry can help ensure this criterion is being met.
You may also want to use your virtual assistant to follow up with clients you collect information from. This will help ensure details are accurate and will allow your business to touch base with recent acquaintances.
If you’re like most modern businesses, you’ll find your email inbox is more full than your voicemail inbox. This is because the majority of today’s consumers and business owners are online.
This is great news for your phone but bad news for your email. But what’s great about emails is that they’re convenient.
They’re non-invasive and allow you to check them whenever you have free time. However, this can turn into an issue when you’re a business owner who rarely has time to check and respond to email messages.
Needless to say, this is bad for business. This is like ignoring your phone calls and voice messages from clients and prospects.
So rather than allowing your inbox to pile up, you can have a virtual assistant manage your emails for you. They can provide customer service, schedule appointments and meetings, and resolve small issues.
Then whatever they can’t handle will be red flagged for your review. This way, you’re only managing messages that need your expertise or authority.
The VA will filter out non-essential messages with the ones that require immediate attention. You’ll find that most days you won’t have much to manage in your inbox, thanks to your virtual assistant.
And we’re not just talking about social media – we’re talking everything to do with socializing. This includes sending thank you notes to your customers and partners.
Then around the holiday season, a virtual assistant can manage writing and sending out holiday cards or e-cards. These simple tasks can easily turn into a burden, especially when you have hundreds or even thousands of cards to send out.
A VA can manage this for you, along with your digital social circles. If you’re managing social media profiles (which we hope you are), your virtual assistant can manage your accounts.
This includes writing and scheduling posts, promoting your blog content, and engaging with users. There’s a lot that goes into maintaining an active social media profile, especially when you have accounts on multiple platforms.
You put the busy into business (or at least we hope so), which means you don’t have the time to schedule appointments. That’s a-okay when you have a virtual assistant to manage everything for you.
This includes contacting clients and partners to schedule meetings, managing your appointments with the doctor, or even setting up days and times for public speaking events.
All of your local and international travel arrangements are in order when you need them. Your VA will find and buy your airline tickets, book your hotel room, and map out your itinerary. And they’re capable of doing this without breaking your budget.
They’ll look for the best deals and even negotiate better rates on your behalf. They do this by conducting research using tools and review sites to find the best companies and prices.
Then they’ll send you reminders to ensure you never miss an important date.
Locating business opportunities is key to thriving as a business. Consistently looking for new customers and partnerships can help your company to grow and expand.
But how can you do this if you’re constantly on the go? Finding opportunities requires research and reaching out to the right people at the right time.
With a virtual assistant who understands your business, you can ensure you’re getting this access. For instance, you can use your VA to find trending products selling on Amazon and eBay to determine what your next hot seller should be.
But this extends beyond e-commerce, a VA can find stocks to invest in, companies to merge with, and just about any other opportunities that can benefit your organization.
Finding potential employees takes a lot of time and effort. You have to write and publish job ads on the right platforms. And you have to go through all of the applications to see which prospects are the right fit.
There are virtual assistants out there who are experts in human resources and can help with the hiring process. This includes managing your job ads, responding to applicants, and even interviewing them.
Then you can go over their notes to see which candidate is likely the best choice. This can save you time and help your business improve with its newly hired talent.
You can even delegate payroll tasks to your virtual assistant.
As your business expands to the digital realm, it’ll have more and more online properties to maintain. One, in particular, is your website. You’ll need to take special care that it’s always accessible and working properly.
With the help of a VA who specializes in web development, you can ensure this. They can run tests to determine site and page load speeds. And then ensure all of the information on the site is up-to-date and accurate.
If you have an e-commerce site, this would include updating your products, images, and descriptions as needed.
Content is one of the best ways to grow your brand’s visibility and authority quickly. You can do this with blog writing, guest post writing, and sharing those pieces on social media.
Your virtual assistant will be able to conduct research about your industry and target customers and then craft pieces of content that relate to them. They’ll also have to conduct research to ensure the pieces are packed with lots of valuable information.
Having someone to both create and manage all of your content is a time-saver.
Convinced that it’s time to stop wasting money and dollars by hiring a virtual assistant? Great! You’re only one step away from making that happen.
Just write down a list of all the tasks you need help with and then you can be well on your way to finding the perfect VA. At Uassist.ME, we have many virtual assistants to choose from.
Our experts can help connect you with the best VA for your needs so contact us today to get started!