Primary Duties of a Virtual Personal Assistant

Movies are creation of fantasy but they often have their roots in reality. The truth of this statement is evident from the portrayal of personal assistants in the movies. More often than not, we see the virtual personal assistants (PAs) as efficient and composed people. They are portrayed as individuals who are extremely efficient with a very shrewd approach towards one's duties, while the boss is shown as a person who is utterly dependent on the helper for the completion of ordinary chores.

The job of the assistant is easy to describe but very difficult to perform. The person generally works in a pressure cooker environment and the actual tasks depend on the nature of the industry in which the person is employed in. Confidence, clarity of thought and alertness are very essential requirements for the assistant.

So What Does A Virtual Personal Assistant Do?

Movies are often accused of exaggerating reality. However, they have accurately portrayed the tough duties of the PA. The core duties may include:

a. Administrative Assistance
The most important duty is to provide support and assistance regarding daily tasks. These tasks are the ones which take a lot of time and effort and yet seem very unrewarding in return. Ignoring such basic tasks can cause a lot of problems.

However, it just does not seem right to take time out your busy schedule to perform these tasks. This is where the assistant helps. He or she performs these tasks on behalf of the boss and enables the boss to remain focused on his core duty.
Tasks like booking the flight or coordinating appointments may not be very important but are unavoidable. The PA is best for performing this task.

b. Secretarial Duties
These duties include the performance of tasks like:
• Taking calls
• Screening the calls that come to the boss
• Keeping track of correspondence
• Taking care of visitors
• Arranging meetings and taking care of cancellations
• Taking minutes, dictation and other such tasks.

c. Other Tasks
The job includes a lot of discretionary powers. When the boss is not available, people look up to the PA to decide on administrative and secretarial matters. The helper may have powers even to consider the overall budget of certain events and promotions.
Many a times, the person is even required to keep track of purchases and storage of office supplies. These tasks may seem unimportant but the office can come to a stop if these tasks are not taken care of in a proper and planned manner.

d. Personal Assistance
The helper is also appointed to assist the boss in the office. However, the PA soon assumes the status of a friend, philosopher and guide and is often relied upon to perform important personal tasks as well.

Your boss may require you to keep track of birthdays, anniversaries and other special dates in the family of your boss and make arrangements like ordering flowers and other such gifts on such occasions.

Further, you may be asked to perform tasks like reserving tickets for movies, concerts and even making booking at restaurants. These tasks go beyond the original job description. However, you will enjoy additional respect and benefits if you go out of your way to help your boss.

Hire an all around virtual assistant

An all-around Virtual Assistant (VA) can be the next best thing to having a staff of personnel at your beck and call. First there's the problem of hiring the right persons with the right skills, ensuring that they can work well without constant supervision. Of course, they should also be motivated to see your business succeed.

If your business isn't even that big to afford you a staff of more than one person, having a VA may be the solution to your administrative needs.

An all-around VA is a highly-skilled professional who can take on administrative tasks from the professional and personal level. They are experts in providing administrative, technical and/or creative solutions to your professional needs. But that is not all that they can assist you in. The need for a VA to do personal administrative tasks should also be discussed here albeit very briefly.

Let it be noted that if a businessman's personal life is running smoothly, thanks to the help of his VA, then chances are, he has more time and energy to focus on running his own business. For example, an entrepreneur who's too busy mounting a campaign for his product may not have time to go around and canvass for an anniversary gift for his wife. His wife is important to him; his business is, too. Yet we all know that in reality, many end up sacrificing their loved ones in order to establish a successful business forgetting that their reason for why they put up their business in the first place is so that they can provide for and enjoy the rewards with their loved ones. A successful person shouldn't be successful only in the professional level but also in the personal level.

Now that, that has been said, we now focus on the more direct benefits to one's business when one hires an all-around VA.

These are 5 Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant For Your Business Prospect

• Wider accessibility to highly-skilled professionals. Not all businesses can afford to hire the services of highly-skilled professionals on a long-term basis especially if the need for their service is not a regular one. A VA would be in a better capacity to help out. Virtual Assistance came into being in order to serve the small businesses but nowadays, even larger firms are utilizing this industry. As a client, you are not limited to hiring the services of only those who have passed their resumes to you and who can report to your office. A VA may live anywhere and if that doesn't bother you and both of you can arrive at an arrangement, then everything's a go.
• You gain a partner in your business. An all-around VA is well-versed in collaboration and can even manage an online team for you. VAs have good communication skills that allow them to translate your needs to others so that they can work together to address your need. If your VA has been with you quite some time, his knowledge and continued exposure to the intricacies of your business will aid him in being of better service to you. He can begin to anticipate your needs and be intuitive in proposing solutions to your needs. He is interested in your success because it translates to a continued partnership.
• No employee overhead. - Because a VA is a business partner and not an employee, you need not worry about workspace, office rentals, equipment, regular salary, taxes, insurance, etc. You are freed from dealing with employee issues and counselling, sick / emergency leaves, career-pathing etc. Your VA is a self-driven, highly motivated and focused partner who enjoys what he's doing and specifically chose this career because he loves the benefits which may not necessarily be dependent on you. They are confident persons who are in control of their lives. A happy worker is a productive worker.
• You can focus on the more important task of expanding the business and leave the smaller administrative tasks essential to running a smooth business with the VAs. Sometimes the smaller tasks are more numerous and time-consuming and can tend to distract you from what is really more important. Micro-managing everything can be stressful and may lead to sour relationships, dissatisfied costumers and even health problems. You can't do it all so get an assistant.
• VAs are more on-task. They work thoroughly and quickly so that they can get paid and move on to the next task. If they work in a different time zone, your work is getting done though your VA even when you are sleeping. And 'though they may be task-oriented, they too, are really your work partners who are interested in finding solutions to challenges and better ways to open up opportunities.

In essence, all-around VAs are professionals who got out of the office lifestyle because they know the importance of living a balanced and flexible life. They are the best persons to help you run your business and at the same time allow you to have a balanced life so that you can enjoy the rewards of what you have been working hard for.

The most important benefit for hiring a virtual assistant

Most people think that the most important benefit for hiring a Virtual Assistant (VA) is lower employment cost. But there are many other benefits of hiring a virtual assistant for and when one thinks about it, these are actually the more essential ones. The cost-savings one gets from hiring a VA is just an added bonus.

One of the most common benefit is the opportunity to expand their talent pool to a bigger community where one can find a more effective and compatible worker or collaborator. A client may find that a VA from another continent may be better equipped than those who have applied to him personally, especially if the talent and/or skill being sought is a specialization not common in the local area. He can even coordinate an online team made up of different persons with different specializations from different areas.

Advantages of hiring a virtual assistant is favored by time differences. If the VA is on the other side of the world, the differences in time zones means that if the client sends his task to his VA during the day, as he sleeps, the VA may actually be working on his task. If the task is simple enough, when he wakes up, his VA may already have finished and sent back to him the output of the task. This affords the client a 24-hour workday even though he does not miss any sleep at all. For people whose work needs quick and efficient results, this reality is a major breakthrough.

Thirdly, the client can concentrate on the more important tasks. The administrative functions which usually is more tedious and time-consuming although essential for smooth operations, may be farmed out to the VA thereby giving the client more time and energy to focus on tasks that demand for his personal attention. Research, database management, following-up on clientele, editing, proofreading are just some of these tasks that may be better dealt with by the VA. The client then can concentrate on attending a meeting, or expanding the business and accomplishing set goals and even spending quality time with his family.

Some VAs even offer help in managing the personal lives of their clients such as organizing trips or social gatherings, canvassing for an item that needs to be bought, etc. Imagine if one needs to organize a clan reunion and there is a need to update contact details, get in touch with people, follow-up on attendance, book a caterer and venue, arrange for entertainment and program, etc. All the client needs to know is that while he's out doing his work, the other tasks are also being done. The VA will just regularly update him through an online progress report where he gives feedback and additional instructions and after a few more minutes of consultation through email, voila! He can go back to what he was doing. No constant phone calls, no person-to-person meetings in some Starbucks or restaurant, no innumerable paperwork that eventually gets misplaced.

Fourthly, VAs are only paid for work that was done. For example, in data-mining tasks, each data culled is given an equivalent rate. If the target output is completed, the client pays the complete rate. If it is incomplete, despite the attention of the highly-skilled VA, then the client only pays for what was done. There is no need to retain workers who may be goofing off when the boss is not around or doing other less important tasks that interfere with the deadline. In the client-VA relationship, satisfaction in the desired output is an important factor, one which the VA strives to cultivate in an effort to ensure repeat business.

Lastly, of course, there is the added savings one gets with not having to maintain an office with equipment where your employee reports to, no vacation leaves or sick leaves to worry about, no pensions, insurance and the likes, no payroll taxes to pay, etc. The client can literally work from wherever he wants to be and be assured that the work he farmed out to his VA is also being given the necessary attention it needs.

When all is said and done, the rise of virtual assistance clearly benefits both sides of the working relationship. The highly-skilled remote employee is allowed to work in his own time without the need to relocate, he is well-compensated and his assistance allows his clients to manage his time, energy and resources well. He knows he is doing a valuable service to his client.

The client is not micro-managing his employees' performance, not burdened with mundane tasks, not spending for non-performing assets. He can better manage his time, his energy and his resources. He may even be managing his relationships better because he is less stressed with less important tasks. Both sides are satisfied and if not, they are always free to engage in other working relationships without contracts tying them down to each other. However, as the working relationship progresses between the VA and his client, one realizes that the collaboration has become a valuable and dynamic partnership.