Do You Need A Virtual Assistant?

Online and on-demand assistants are growing in popularity. How could one make a difference to your professional life?
We can all admit to subtle pangs of jealousy when we see business leaders and celebrities on TV being followed by a dutiful assistant that takes all the menial tasks off their hands and leaves them to focus solely on being fabulous. Well, in today’s virtual world that might just change: we can all have an assistant to help us with our daily lives.
The rise in online worksites like Upwork and People Per Hour – combined with the ease of communication through Skype and IM technology – mean that physical distance is less of a barrier to communication. Big business recognised this a long time ago and began to outsource menial tasks and even entire call centres to remote countries.
The on-demand work industry is growing exponentially; companies such as taxi service Uber, domestic services experts Handy and others have helped the concept of on-demand workers punch through to the mainstream consciousness.
So how could a virtual assistant benefit your working day?
Email management
Email now takes up 28% of the average office worker’s time and is one of the biggest time drains on a freelance contractor’s time. A study by Loughborough University in the UK showed that tasks take a third longer when email is allowed to intrude. Phone calls and other momentary distractions have also been proven to ruin productivity. Your assistant can take charge of your email accounts, summarising their content into one simple email and bringing anything of vital importance to your attention. This ensures you don’t lose time during the course of the working day dealing with other things.
With Skype providing tools such as advanced forwarding, you could have an assistant based anywhere in the world (providing English is spoken as a primary language) organising your emails into the order of priority and listing phone calls that have to be returned urgently. A virtual assistant could even transcribe voice recordings you make on-the-go into coherent emails.
Research
Need some market research done but not got time in your schedule? Your assistant can take the work off your hands and sift through the detritus on the web before coming back with useful URLs and the information you need. Don’t have time to look for a local dentist when you’re travelling? Your remote assistant can secure you an emergency appointment in Los Angeles these days. Can’t find the time to take charge of your diary? Send out a list of appointments you need to make and get it taken care of from afar. It may seem extreme, but these assistants could even update your social media.
Low-budget
With rates lower than $5 per hour freely advertised on Upwork and 30,000 virtual assistants advertising rates lower than $10 an hour, you can free up valuable time to focus on other things while keeping the business budget in check. The on-demand nature and the high value the sites place on a five-star rating, as well as various tactics designed to police the workers, means that your virtual assistant will charge you only for the time they physically spend on your tasks and your life could be thoroughly organised for the price of a takeout lunch.
So could it be time to invest in a virtual assistant?
Certainly the laws of on-demand work, supply and demand and international business mean we can all afford to have an assistant of our own, allowing us to spend valuable extra time on important tasks. Admittedly a virtual assistant won’t chase round after you or fetch your latte, but they will take take care of menial tasks and free up your time to spend with your family, see your friends or even learn a new skill.
Whatever you do, or however you spend your time, a virtual assistant is now within everyone’s reach. Follow the VPS.NET blog for more guides to improving your professional life.