Virtual Assistant Vs In-house Employee: What Successful Entrepreneurs Choose

1. VIRTUAL INHOUSE VS ASSISTANT EMPLOEE WHAT SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS CHOOSE Hiring the right employees for your business is just not crucial, but also essential for the growth of your business. Finding the right talent is always challenging, time consuming and mentally draining. If you are a startup owner and juggling between hiring a full time employee, or a virtual assistant – I would help you with the dilemma of who you should choose – a virtual assistant or an in-house employee. After you fnish reading this post, you will be able to make an informed decision based on your needs. WHAT VIRTUAL ASSISTANT CAN DO In case you haven’t heard about virtual assistants before, let me tell you that they are not new. Gone are the days when virtual assistants used to be only virtual personal assis tants. Now they are skilled professionals who are adept at completing a wide range of tasks from social media promotion to eCom- merce product listing. So a virtual assistant is not someone who is sitting in an ivory tower. Many successful companies, such asBufer, Mozilla, Genuitec, etc. only hire virtual assistants. Instead, a virtual assistant is a real person who is skilled in their chosen skill set. You might be wondering! What tasks can you assign to your virtual assistants? Here is the list of some tasks that you can outsource to a virtual assistant Creating documents/spreadsheets/ PowerPoint presentations Social media management Newsletters (Aweber, Constant Contact, InfusionSoft, 1ShoppingCart, MailChimp) Email & chat support Creating of a corporate blog Real Estate Emailing potential new clients Accounting & bookkeeping Customer service (calls, followup, getting billing, etc.) Internet research Booking tickets / planning and coordinating travel plans eCommerce listing Website creation / design / development / maintenance (versed in WordPress, Dreamweaver, Joomla and Weebly) Administrative tasks such as booking fights & hotels Set up meetings, working schedule using Google/Outlook calendar on your behalf VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS VS IN-HOUSE EMPLOYEES INHOUSE VIRTUAL ASSISTANT A virtual assistant or in-house employee? EMPLOYEE OR To Let us answer this question, let us consider this imaginary situation – you want to do social media promotion of your business. consider you hire an in-house employee for social media promotion. For social media managers salaries, Indeed’s national average was $61,000 per annum. While, Glassdoor’s national average was $47,190. You have two options: the frst is to hire an in-house employee and the second is to go for a virtual assistant. And PayScale showed a median salary of $46,984 per annum. The point here is you will pay around $40,000 to $60,000 per annum for the social media management of your business. That makes around $23.43 per hour, considering an employee is working 40 hours per week with an annual salary of $45,000. Now, let us have a look at how much a virtual assistant costs. This is a virtual assistant cost comparison chart of Acelerar Suppose you choose the Gold plan, you will have to pay $4.5 per hour*, while you will have to pay $23.43 per hour for a regular employee. VIRTUAL ASSISTANT? Cost of Training You can save $18.75 per hour by hiring a virtual assistant. BENEFITS IN HIRING A SOCIAL MEDIA Virtual assistant wages are so low that you can save lots of money. Virtual assistants are skilled professionals. So you don’t have to spend any money to train them. In case you don’t like the work of a virtual assistant, you can ask for a replacement. Leading companies, such as Acelerar, easily replace virtual assistants if clients are not satisfed with their work. What’s more, Acelerar ofers a free trial of its virtual assistant services. Sometimes, the employee you hire needs training. Of Course, it is you who are going to bear the cost of training. Cost of operation Other Expenses When you hire an employee, there is an operating cost (ofce expenses & equipment) associated with it. Needless to say, when you hire an in-house employee, you will have to think about payroll taxes and vacation pay. Even if you go for used work cubes, you will spend around $2,000 to build a proper working space and $1000+ for a computer and $500 for useful software. And don’t forget the periodic expensive upgrades. But if you hire a virtual assistant, you won’t have to worry about anything. Virtual assistants pay taxes themselves or the agency sourcing them. And you will not have to pay any retirement beneft to the virtual assistant you hire. Hiring a virtual assistant can save you more than $3000 initially. Here is a list of top benefts you need to pay to a regular employee Paid personal leave Short term disability Long term care insurance Paid sick leave Paid family leave Health/medical care Payroll taxes If you hire a virtual assistant, you won’t have to provide these benefts. This can save you a huge amount of money. The biggest beneft of hiring virtual assistants is that you can scale up business operations without any risk. As virtual assistants are paid on an hourly basis, you can hire them as long as you need them. However, this is not the case with an in-house employee. You cannot ask them to leave at your will, even when there is no work. What’s more, virtual assistants work as per the schedules of their clients. So, they can add fexibility to your business. Suppose, if you want to ofer 24/7 phone support, hire a virtual assistant from a diferent time-zone and you are all set. CONCLUSION Virtual assistants are a secret weapon for startup owners. By hiring a virtual assistant, you not only save a great amount of money, but also add fexibility to your organization. You don’t need to train them, you don’t have to ofer them ofce space, and you don’t have to provide them with sick or earned leaves. Neither you have to provide them any retirement beneft. So whenever you need to increase headcount in your organization next time, think about hiring a virtual assistant frst. contact@acelerartech.com twitter.com/Acelerartech +1-408-426-5817 facebook.com/acelerartechnologies www.acelerartech.com