Virtual Assistants vs Employees: Which is right for your business?
As your business grows, you'll inevitably reach a point where you need additional support. When faced with the choice between hiring a virtual assistant (VA) or a full-time employee, it can be challenging to determine the best option. Making the wrong decision can result in wasted money, time, and energy. In this blog post, we'll explore the pros and cons of hiring virtual assistants and full-time employees, helping you make an informed hiring decision.
Virtual Assistant: Pros and Cons
Virtual assistants have gained popularity in recent years for their flexibility and availability on an as-needed basis. They can work part-time or full-time, depending on your business requirements. Here are the pros and cons of hiring a virtual assistant.
Pros:
Wide range of skills
Virtual assistants often possess diverse skill sets, allowing you to find a VA who fits your specific needs. From administrative tasks to SEO, copywriting, digital marketing, and more, you can easily find a VA with the expertise you require.
Flexible work arrangements
Hiring a VA allows you to pay them only for the hours they work or tasks they complete, offering cost savings for your business. You can hire them for specific tasks or projects, allowing you to scale your workforce up or down as needed. This flexibility is particularly valuable for small businesses or start-ups that experience fluctuating workloads.
Budget-friendly
Hiring a VA on a project-based, part-time, or short-term basis eliminates the need for investing in overhead costs, allowing you to work within your budget. It also eliminates the need to provide office space, equipment, or benefits typically associated with hiring a full-time employee.
Enhanced Productivity and Efficiency
Virtual assistants are typically highly specialised and experienced professionals who excel in their respective fields. By delegating certain tasks to them, you can free up your core team's time to focus on more strategic initiatives. Virtual assistants are often skilled in various areas such as administrative tasks, customer support, content creation, social media management, and more, enabling your business to run smoothly and efficiently.
Reduced Training and Onboarding Time
Hiring and onboarding traditional employees can be a time-consuming process. Virtual assistants, on the other hand, are already experienced professionals in their field. They require minimal training and can quickly adapt to your business processes and systems. This saves you valuable time and resources that can be redirected towards other critical aspects of your business.
Cons:
Tracking working hours
It can be challenging to monitor and track the working hours of a virtual assistant, especially if they are on an hourly basis. There are many online tools that you can use to track working hours such as, Toggl, so if you decide to hire a VA, it’s important to ask them how they track their work.
Communication difficulties
Due to their remote work setup, maintaining constant communication with virtual assistants can be more challenging, particularly for urgent projects. With so many communication and video calling platforms available, this is becoming less of a problem but if you are seeking lots of face-to-face communication then a VA might not be right for you.
Technical challenges
External technical difficulties faced by virtual assistants are beyond your control, which can impact productivity.
Employee: Pros and Cons
Hiring a full-time employee involves a more traditional approach. Here are the pros and cons of hiring a full-time employee for your business.
Pros:
In-person interaction
Hiring an employee allows you to personally evaluate their character, capabilities, and work ethic through interviews and interactions.
Mutually beneficial relationship
Building a relationship with a full-time or part-time employee can lead to improved productivity, business growth, and smoother workflow.
Better monitoring and communication
With employees working on-site, it becomes easier to track their daily, weekly, and monthly productivity and promptly address any issues or errors that arise.
Cons:
Higher costs
Hiring a full-time employee involves additional expenses such as office supplies, equipment, workspace, and employee benefits and compensation.
Training responsibility
Employers are often responsible for the cost of training employees to enhance their skills and knowledge.
Lack of flexibility
Full-time employees may struggle to adapt to last-minute changes, potentially impacting work quality and efficiency.
Regular compensation
Even during periods of low workload, full-time employees require regular salary payments, which can be a financial burden.
The Main Differences
There are significant differences between virtual assistants and full-time employees. Here are the key distinctions:
Working Hours
Virtual assistants offer flexible working hours, including weekends and holidays, depending on the agreed arrangement. Full-time employees typically adhere to a fixed 9 to 5 schedule, with exceptions for certain industries or work shifts.
Location
Full-time employees work on-site, requiring the employer to provide and maintain a physical workspace. Virtual assistants can work from anywhere in the world. However, as flexible working arrangements have increased you may now have your employees also working remotely.
Overhead Expenses
Hiring a virtual assistant involves minimal overhead costs, as they often have their own equipment and workspace. Hiring a full-time employee requires providing office supplies, equipment, and a designated workspace.
Cost
Hiring a virtual assistant is generally more cost-effective than a full-time employee, as you only pay for the hours they work or agree on a fixed payment rate. Full-time employees come with higher costs, including benefits, compensation, and office-related expenses. A huge benefit of outsourcing to a virtual assistant over an employee, is that you do not need to pay for employment tax, annual leave, national insurance or pension contributions, saving your business money.
What’s your decision?
Choosing between a virtual assistant and a full-time employee requires careful consideration of your business's specific needs and priorities. Virtual assistants offer flexibility, a diverse skill set, and cost savings, while full-time employees provide in-person interaction, better monitoring, and effective communication. Hopefully this list of pros and cons can help you make an informed decision that aligns with your business goals and resources.
Interested in trying a Virtual Assistant?
If you like the sound of hiring a VA, then we can help you out. When hiring a VA, especially for the first time, it is important that they are the right fit for you and your business. That’s why we offer a ‘Get to Know You’ package.
Within this package you will have three months to use a regular monthly packages’ worth of hours. This could be 10, 20 or 40 hours of support. This extended period will provide you with more time to get to know your Virtual Assistant and what it is like to work with one.
If you are happy with our service and would like to continue working with us, then you can move to a Standard, Professional or Executive monthly retainer package. As a thank you for signing up to our monthly retainer package, we will give you a 10% discount off your first month with us! However, if you do not wish to continue, your package will simply end once you have used all your hours or at the end of the three months.
