What is a virtual assistant?

I'm often asked to describe the role of Virtual Assistant. This is one of the easiest questions to give a quick response to and yet one of the hardest for traditional business to understand. In essence, a Virtual Assistant can provide any sort of business help you need. Some VAs offer web building services, some telephone communications. Some focus on bookkeeping. Others, such as myself, can handle just about anything Microsoft Office based.

Projects range from 15 minute quick tasks to long-term complex projects. I have completed training manuals, designed presentations, created flyers and customized publications. I format, type, design, develop and analyze data. I work with direct-selling moms and professional corporations. Thanks to experience gained over many years, there is little I am unable to accomplish. This is a great way to increase my income while working around my work and home life schedule.

Benefits to clients include improved time management, reduction of in-house staff equaling reduced cost in benefits and equipment, and increased confidence that your work is getting the attention it needs. Hiring a virtual assistant is a way to promote your business flexibility and use your resources wisely.

Here is a quick definition of Virtual Assistant as found at Wikipedia:

A virtual assistant (typically abbreviated to VA, also called a virtual office assistant)^[1] is generally self-employed and provides professional administrative, technical, or creative (social) assistance to clients from a home office.^[2][3] Because virtual assistants are independent contractors rather than employees, clients are not responsible for any employee-related taxes, insurance or benefits (except in the context that those indirect expenses are included in the VAs fees). Clients also avoid the logistical problem of providing extra office space, equipment or supplies. Clients pay for 100% productive work, and can work with Virtual Assistants, individually, or in multi-VA firms to meet their exact needs. Virtual Assistants usually work for other small businesses.^[4] It is estimated that there are as few as 5,000-8,000 or as many as 25,000 virtual assistants worldwide; the profession is growing in centralized economies with "fly-in, fly-out" staffing practices.^[5][6][7]

Common modes of communication and data delivery include the Internet, e-mail and phonecall conferences,^[8] online work spaces, and fax machine. Professionals in this business work on a contractual basis and a long-lasting cooperation is standard. Typically 5 years of administrative experience in an office is expected at such positions as executive assistant, office manager/supervisor, secretary, legal assistant, paralegal, legal secretary, real estate assistant, information technology, et cetera.

In recent years Virtual Assistants have also worked their way into many mainstream businesses and with the advent of VOIP or other services such as Skype it has been possible to have a Virtual Assistant who can answer your phone remotely without the end user's knowledge. This allows many businesses to add a personal touch in the form of a receptionist without the additional cost of hiring someone.

In Non-Stop Inertia, Ivor Southwood analyses the role of virtual assistant as the epitome of the contemporary phenomenon of precarious work. Through this mode of employment, which combines supposed flexibility and autonomy with actual lack of human contact, "home itself becomes a kind of non-place in which we are all either willing or reluctant jugglers”.^[9]

Consider the use of a Virtual Assistant in your business. There is no job too small or too large; the right Virtual Assistant is out there waiting for you!