Submitted by: Diana Barnum

How to Delegate Tasks to Your Virtual Assistants – 3 Steps to Success

A virtual assistant (VA) also known as a personal assistant (PA) is often more than just an assistant. This wonderful helper is not only an expert in their field of choice, but often also an entrepreneur who provides one-on-one administrative support for your business.

These assistants are referred to as virtual because they may not be readily available for face-to-face contact. In fact today, most assistants operate from their home office or from their place of business. While this may not seem appeasing to some, a VA’s limited face-to-face time assistance does not diminish results.

On the whole, while a VA is helpful, making the most of his or her assistance can be undermined if you are unsure of how to delegate tasks appropriately. So here are some tips to help.

1. Analyze your priorities. If you are unsure of what needs to be done or if your expectations are unclear, then it is hard to delegate tasks to a VA. Without prioritizing and separating your tasks, it will not only be hard to delegate to someone else, but it will be even harder to see your accomplishments and completed goals over time. Keep track of everything that is going in terms of time and what you want to accomplish. In doing this, you can see where your time is going and what tasks aren’t being completed, so that you can delegate those tasks to your VA.

2. Communicate with your VA. Now that you have a clear-cut picture of what you need to delegate, you must now communicate those tasks and any additional issues with your VA. This is important throughout all stages of working with your helper so that you can correct any ongoing productivity issues as soon as possible to keep work running in an efficient manner and up to par.

3. Use technology to make not only communicating, but task handling and delegating a fluid process. If you have more than one member of your virtual team in different locations, then it may pose a problem to satisfy training, scheduling and sharing information like files and notes. So become familiar with technology like Skype, online file sharing via Google documents, video and chat activities to actively communicate as needed, especially for exchanging important information. Once a member of your virtual team is involved in this process, this activity will make it seem like the distance between the team members is less than miles apart.

While working with a VA may be a daunting task at first, it can be easier than you think. Make yourself aware of your project’s overview. Then go over the concepts and associated tasks with your VA, using technology to communicate and share information. By doing this, delegating to your VA will become less daunting.

5 Mistakes To Avoid With Your Virtual Assistants

When you are working with virtual assistants, you will want to be sure that you take a moment to consider that there are some things you will want to avoid. These are common mistakes that people make which can result in a nightmarish experience.

1. Know about the virtual assistant before you hire them. You should know this individual as well as a normal employee or contract worker. This means contacting former clients or companies who have worked with the individual to get an idea about their work ethic.

2. Provide clear details on the work you expect to be performed. It doesn’t do any good to tell them that you want a spreadsheet and offer them numbers. Be precise and to the point when giving instructions for optimal results.

3. Check the knowledge of the virtual assistant before you hire them. It is important that you don’t simply hire them on based on price. There are basics they will need to be able to do for you, be sure that those minimum requirements can be met.

4. Provide them with firm deadlines. If you leave a task open-ended, they may not get their work done. Have a clearly defined deadline for your jobs and give more time than you would actually expect it to take. This means that if a job should take 8 hours to do, provide them a 12 hour deadline. That way if something does come up, there is some wiggle room for them.

5. After each project, decide if the relationship should continue. If you started off getting amazing work and the quality has deteriorated, then you might want to consider looking for a new virtual assistant. This helps you avoid becoming trapped with an individual that simply goes through the motions of the job.

The overall success you have with your virtual assistant will depend on you and your approach to this individual. Never settle below your actual standards, and you should find that you are happy with the results that you get. And if things start taking a turn for the worse, reestablish guidelines and communications to steer things back on track.

Get help as needed from other companies and individuals who work with virtual assistants by networking on forums in your niche or reaching out via email or social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. As outsourcing grows in popularity, you will find many resources and people available to help you.

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