Virtual Assistants (VA) have a varied set of skills in their arsenal. They can be helpful in social media management, administrative tasks, content creation, and anything else depending on your need and what kind of VA you have. As such, more and more business owners have turned to VA’s for help with their projects in their company.
Having a VA can certainly make your work life a lot easier. However, it also happens that some lose their established working relationships with their VA due to miscommunication on both ends. As such, you need to establish working guidelines as soon as possible to ensure hassle-free and smooth communication with your VA.
How to build working guidelines
Communication with your VA is an underrated task. It may seem normal and frequent, but this also serves as the foundation of your working relationship together. Even with the help of digital messaging wherein, we can send a message with just the tip of our fingers, effective communication is still difficult to achieve for some.
To achieve this more easily, you have to remember to always be on the same page as your virtual assistant. You can utilize tools such as emails, zoom calls, messaging apps, and others you both find to be effective in your working style.
The following will help you in achieving this as well:
Scheduling Work
Humans like to follow routines. We don’t like guessing and predicting the way things will flow for us in our days. This is why having a detailed schedule can help a lot in working with your VA.
You have to establish a pattern of work. For example, having deadlines on the weekends, or having a video call with each other every Tuesday. Set up a schedule agreed upon by both parties. If your VA knows what to expect from you all week, then that makes it easier for them to match your rhythm and workflow.
By letting them know in advance, you also allow them to prioritize their work with you. As you are the one who informed them first and also had an agreed schedule with them, it is now up to your VA to fit their other schedules within that week.
There can still be interruptions such as emergencies, but at the very least you and your VA have a good understanding of your expectations.
Scheduling the time off
As you schedule your plot your work schedule, it is also important to map out the time off. This could be days off, but it could also be a sudden absence caused by emergencies like a sickness.
Having a plan on how to deal with this should it arise can minimize its impact should it occur. This will also avoid misunderstandings should there be a time period where any of you are not available for contact.
It’s also important for the client and the VA to know that they should inform each other should there be a change in the schedule.
Work expectations
What you have to understand as a client is that VA’s often handle multiple clients at once. This is why you need to have an agreed set number of hours of work with each other. Should you increase the number of hours of work that you assign to them suddenly, you should inform them well ahead of time. This is because not all VA will be able to match your expectations if they’re suddenly given an extra amount of work in a short amount of time.
Conclusion
Communication is easy enough. You can just pop a message on a messaging app, wait for a reply, and acknowledge it. However, effective communication is different. It is also much better for your working relationship with your VA in the long run.
Knowing what to expect from your VA and what they expect from you can save you from a ton of misunderstandings in the future!
So if you want to take your business to the next level, what are you waiting for? Hire a VA and make your work easier especially since now you know how to build a better working relationship and guidelines with them.
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