You need to know how to delegate tasks to a virtual assistant because online delegation of secretarial services consists of entrusting the Virtual Assistant, or a professional who works remotely, with back-office activities or web activities. Online services that can be delegated must have particular characteristics. The most delegated tasks must be feasible remotely and not require the constant presence of the delegating person.
These may include email management, web content scheduling, social comment moderation, online searches, and invoicing. Delegating secretarial services online offers many advantages, such as saving time and money, greater flexibility and scalability, and the possibility of taking advantage of the virtual assistant’s specific skills.
Virtual assistants are not all the same. It is essential to check what services they provide. In addition, it is necessary to establish expectations and tasks to be assigned clearly. Project management tools and effective communication can ensure a successful remote collaboration with a Virtual Assistant.
How to Delegate Tasks to a Virtual Assistant
Delegating is important for an entrepreneur because it allows him to focus on the tasks he considers most important and that best utilize his skills and resources. Delegating some tasks to a Virtual Assistant for the back office, for example, allows the entrepreneur to dedicate more time to the growth and development of his business, instead of wasting time on administrative or routine tasks.
Furthermore, delegating helps reduce excess work, time-consuming but still necessary activities, and the stress that comes with them.
When you start delegating, you have more free time for yourself, your family, and your hobbies. Finding competent and reliable professionals to turn to can ensure that tasks are carried out efficiently and that the results are high quality.
Advantages of online delegation of secretarial services
The advantages of online delegation, of secretarial services, are many:
1. Saving time and money: By entrusting back office activities to a Virtual Assistant, the entrepreneur can save time and money that would otherwise be spent on these activities.
2. Greater flexibility and scalability: A professional is more flexible than an office worker and can adapt to the peaks and troughs of work within the collaboration.
3. Specific skills: A Virtual Assistant has specific skills, useful for business goals, such as knowledge of a foreign language, a particular social platform, or software.
4. Access to a virtual office: This type of collaboration allows the company to work in a modern way, and with project management tools, the company can still control the progress of the work.
5. Reduction of fixed costs: Remote work eliminates all the fixed costs typical of an employee’s job, such as office rent, consumables, licenses, utilities, labor consultant, etc.
6. Stress Reduction: Delegating low-value and non-urgent tasks, especially back-office tasks, helps reduce stress and the resulting overwork.
Online delegation methods for secretarial services
The virtual assistant is not hired. She works under her own collaboration contract, created specifically for her services, by a lawyer specializing in digital. There are different ways of collaborating:
1. Project Collaboration: For specific projects to be completed within a certain period.
2. Collaboration by hour packages: You purchase a monthly hour package, which must be used within one month of purchase. Unused hours are considered lost and cannot be accumulated.
3. Collaboration on hours on a final basis: a suitable solution for occasional collaborations and where it is not possible to quantify a range of hours.
It is important that the entrepreneur and the Virtual Assistant establish the most suitable method of collaboration together and that the payment and communication methods are clear and transparent from the start. Choosing which project management and communication tools to base the project on guarantees its success.
Tools for online delegation of secretarial services
Once it is clear which tasks to delegate, the objectives, and the delivery times, it is time to create the procedure to follow. We need more tools for sharing information, useful material, and tracking work done.
The choice of digital tools is vast and essential because they form the plan to design the project. You can use multiple tools. These are the ones I always use:
- LastPass: A password manager that lets my clients give me access to platforms, without giving me their password.
- Trello: A platform for visually managing projects
- Toggl : Track time for projects or tasks, and extract reports from them
- Google Drive/Dropbox
- Meet for video calls
The essential points of the project to be inserted into the platform and monitored are:
- Sections dedicated to those who collaborate on the project
- Software to access
- Planning and monitoring checklist
- Execution tracker
- Inserting useful questions
- Time tracking
- Monitoring requests and changes
A virtual assistant works for multiple clients and the client who sends information, partly with voice messages, partly with emails and phone calls, cannot be managed. Everything must be stored in a single container, for the good of everyone and of the project itself.
Online Secretariat that you can delegate to your Virtual Assistant
The virtual assistant does not read minds, as many would like. So you have to explain very well the type of work that will be done and how it is to be done.
The secretarial part to be delegated remotely must have very specific characteristics:
- Repetitiveness
- It’s not urgent
- It can be done remotely
- Your constant presence as the delegate is not required
- The specific skills of the delegate are not required
What are the most requested services by entrepreneurs and small businesses who want to outsource to free up precious time in a concrete way:
- Data entry
- Billing
- Customer care
- Presentations
- Online searches
- File conversion
- Report creation
- Making appointments
- Travel organization
- Email and spam management
- Response to first contact requests
- Archive creation (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive)
Choosing the right Virtual Assistant is important: not all offer secretarial services, and not all are available to handle phone calls and telemarketing.