What are the cost benefits of hiring a virtual assistant over a personal assistant?

Getting the best value for your business with virtual assistants

With a hectic schedule and little time to find and recruit the right person to support your business needs, it can feel like a needle in a haystack to find just the right fit.

Fortunately for you, if you’re stuck between the decision on whether to recruit a personal assistant or hire a virtual assistant, you’re halfway there.

If you run an online or offline business, hiring a virtual assistant (VA) can provide more flexibility than you think, compared to the more traditional personal assistant role.

Beyond comparing the hourly (versus salary) rates, there are a few other things you might want to consider when making the decision to hire in-house or outsource to virtual assistants to add value to your business.

Here is a run-down on the cost benefits of hiring a VA.

You don’t need to pay for training

Once you’ve found the right person to work with you, the next thing you need to do is train them up. This usually involves your personal assistant taking time out of the business on expensive courses to get up to scratch with your software and systems.

With a virtual assistant, you don’t need to budget for training. As VAs spend their careers supporting a varied client base, they are well-versed in the latest software and systems.

Unless you run industry niche programmes, the chances are your VA is already familiar with them, allowing you to brief them with minimal direction so they can hit the ground running.

100% productivity guaranteed

The statistics are not great when it comes to the productivity of the average employee. You pay the salary of a personal assistant based on an average eight-hour working day and for that, not even a third of that time is productive.

Virtual assistants, however, are dedicated to completing tasks as efficiently as possible, as they are paid on an hourly or block rate and work to a timer.

Unlike a personal assistant, who may be stretched in all directions, you have the entire focus of a VA, getting more bang for your buck, as you pay only for the hours allocated to your task.

An average employee is productive around 3 hours in an eight-hour day

Advantages of hourly rates Vs. salaried costs

When broken down, the average rate of a personal assistant on salary is around $30 per hour, compared to $70 per hour for a virtual assistant.

On the face of it, it looks as though you’re paying over double for the privilege. But it’s not the case.

Not when you add up all the other costs associated with employing a salaried member of staff.

As virtual assistants are employed as contractors, they take care of their own expenses.

That means they cover their own annual leave, public holidays and sick leave, make their own contributions to their KiwiSaver and pay their own taxes – all the things you pay for and more when you recruit a permanent salaried staff member.

Companies save up to 78% of costs by hiring virtual assistants

Hire them on demand for the projects you need

As you can hire virtual assistants on a ‘no commitment’ basis, this gives you the flexibility to hire only as and when you need support.

For a growing business you may not be ready to take the financial risk of taking on permanent staff, and with virtual assistants you don’t have to.

As you hire a VA to work on specific tasks, you have the advantage of hiring and paying for the hours that you need instead of paying a personal assistant for an 8-hour day.

If you opt for the services of a virtual assistant company as opposed to a freelancer, you have the additional opportunity to work with different VAs within the company, to find the best working style to suit yours.

They help you work smarter, not harder

Whilst you’re keeping your VA busy with all the things that once ate up all your time, you can focus on the money-earning business end of things.

Where personal assistants are generally great all-rounders in supporting your business needs, virtual assistants come skilled-up in certain areas of expertise and can complement weaker areas of your business.

Whether that’s business development, stakeholder management, finance, or marketing, as a small to medium sized business, you can benefit from the specialisms of virtual assistants to help you scale-up and increase your profits.

With diverse skillsets and the desire to help you get ahead, virtual assistants prove to be highly cost-effective, business support assets.

Interested to know if a virtual assistant would be a good fit for you?

If you’d like to find out about what services and support we can offer you, click here to learn more.