7 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Virtual Assistant to Support Your Team

1. Reduced salary and overhead costs 
2. Lower training costs 
3. Lets you scale your business operations quickly 
4. Outsource repetitive and non-core tasks 
5. Provide 24/7 customer support
6. Assist with the recruitment process 
7. Provide personal and family assistance

1. Reduced salary and overhead costs

Hiring a virtual assistant allows teams and business owners to acquire additional support and resources from qualified personnel without having to shoulder the salary and overhead costs that come with hiring full-time, in-house employees. 

When you hire a remote virtual assistant, you’ll only be paying for the services they provide. This means you won’t have to shoulder any of the mandatory benefits associated with hiring full-time admin staff—including health insurance, retirement savings plans, and paid time off. 

You also won’t need to rent office space for your remote virtual assistant or provide them with computers, office equipment, and an internet allowance. Your freelance VA will cover all of these needs, helping your team or business save a great deal of money. 

Here at Sigrid, we charge our clients on a subscription basis. This means clients can purchase subscription plans that guarantee them a certain number of support hours per month. 

For example, a subscriber who purchases the Personal Plan gets 15 hours of support per month from a dedicated Sigrid Virtual Assistant. If they need additional support, they can top up their hours and delegate more tasks to their VA.

Our other plans—namely the Startup Plan, the Growth Plan, and the Enterprise Plan—provide even more hours of support per month to multiple users. These plans are suitable for teams that require support from one dedicated VA, with additional support from a backup VA and an entire team of Specialists.

2. Lower training Costs

If you hire an in-house employee, you’re responsible for training them and placing them on a career development track. You could easily spend two weeks or longer on-boarding a new employee with no guarantee that this new hire will stay with your company for the long term or even pass the probationary period. 

If you decide to hire a remote VA from a reputable virtual assistant agency, you won’t have to invest the time nor the effort in training your VA as the agency will take care of this responsibility. 

At Sigrid, all of our Virtual Assistants receive support from a Customer Success Manager and a professional management team. In addition, all VAs receive bi-weekly in-house training. These regular training sessions equip our VAs with the skills and know-how to service our clients with excellence. 

Only 1% of applicants make it through our rigorous recruitment process, and training continues well into their tenure at Sigrid. This way, our clients can focus on delegating their admin tasks to their Sigrid VAs without having to worry about upskilling and training them.

3. Lets you scale your business operations quickly

Are you an entrepreneur in need of specialized skills and admin support to scale your business quickly? Vetting and hiring specialists can be a time-consuming process; plus you’ll have to manage your new employees. 

These non-core tasks will prevent you from focusing on what really matters—whether that’s growing your business, refining your business strategy, or attracting new clients. 

A qualified and highly experienced virtual assistant can help you scale your business operations quickly by providing you with the support you need when you need it. 

At Sigrid, your dedicated VA is supported by a team of Specialists who can provide knowledgeable support in many areas, including social media management, human resources, bookkeeping, and project management support. This allows you to fill skills gaps very quickly without having to invest in a full-time, salaried employee. 

If you’re a manager trying to manage a remote team successfully, tapping into the collective expertise of your Sigrid VA and team of Specialists will benefit your team immensely. 

Whether your team needs accounting and bookkeeping support, calendar management and scheduling support, project management support, or IT support, your VA will manage and coordinate everyone’s concerns. This way, your team can focus on their core tasks and drive your team—or company’s—overarching goals.

4. Outsource repetitive and non-core tasks 

Whether you’re a leader or rank-and-file employee, you’re most likely spending a great deal of time doing repetitive and non-core tasks. Whether that’s updating your work calendar, setting up Zoom meetings, or generating expense reports, these seemingly micro-tasks are actually chipping away at your productivity by diverting you from your core responsibilities.

By delegating all of your recurring administrative and non-core tasks to your virtual assistant, you can focus on your main objectives. This form of smart delegation allows you to focus more of your time and energy on tasks that move the needle forward. 

Aside from boosting your productivity, outsourcing tasks to your VA also frees up more time in your schedule, resulting in greater work-life balance. 

For teams, a highly competent VA can provide them with administrative and specialized support. This gives team members the freedom to focus on their core responsibilities—whether that’s meeting project deadlines, exceeding their KPIs, or hitting their quarterly and annual goals.

5. Provide 24/7 customer support

With your business growing and expanding into new markets, you’ll end up juggling multiple time zones. Your customers might be making inquiries or processing their orders outside business hours in your time zone. 

Unless you’re able to provide 24/7 customer support, you could lose valuable business and create a negative experience for your customers.

By hiring a customer support virtual assistant, you can process customer orders 24/7—even when it’s no longer business hours in your own time zone. Your VA can also take charge of order fulfillment and tracking, the processing of refunds, dealing with escalated customer concerns, and other customer support responsibilities. 

As for customer inquiries, your customer support VA can answer all inquiries made via chat, email, or phone in a timely manner. This not only helps with your lead nurturing and conversions but also goes a long way in keeping your customers satisfied.

6. Assist with the recruitment process

Does your team or business need to fill an urgent position? Posting job openings on recruitment websites, vetting resumes, reaching out to candidates on LinkedIn, and interviewing applicants is a time-consuming process. It also takes valuable time away from your core work responsibilities. 

By delegating the recruitment process to your virtual assistant, you can fill in vacancies in your business or team with qualified new hires without distracting you from your core responsibilities.

Your dedicated VA can manage all aspects of the recruitment process: from posting job openings on recruitment websites and vetting resumes, to scheduling initial interviews with applicants and final interviews with hiring managers.

If these applicants pass the final interviews and are hired, your VA can assist with onboarding your new employees and processing their paperwork.

7. Provide personal and family assistance

Whether you’re a C-level executive, entrepreneur, or rank-and-file employee, your days are likely filled with a constant stream of personal and work-related tasks. This never-ending to-do list makes it hard for you to focus on your major priorities and could eventually lead to burnout if left unmanaged.

According to a recent report from Gallup, 49% of global employees say they experience major challenges in their work and personal lives. Moreover, workers who consistently experience high levels of workplace burnout say they have difficulty meeting their family responsibilities. 

To help create balance in their lives, workers should delegate their personal and family logistics to remote personal assistants (PAs). 

Your Sigrid PA can handle all personal and family logistics that can be accomplished remotely. Some of these tasks include:

• Household maintenance and repairs - Your PA can remotely schedule house cleanings and other chores (such as roof inspections, carpet cleaning, and pest control). Your remote PA will also book the appointments with the contractors and ensure that they arrive at your property on time.

• Child and family logistics - Your remote personal assistant will schedule doctors’ appointments, book venues for upcoming family celebrations, and schedule extracurricular activities for your children. Your PA will also accomplish your to-do lists— whether that’s grocery shopping, ordering supplies, or paying your bills online—so you can focus on your major priorities.

• Managing bookings - Your remote PA can make reservations at pubs, restaurants, and hotels. If you need your PA to research the best venues for the occasion, they can come up with a short list of options. 

• Child care and schooling - Free up more time in your busy schedule by delegating all the logistical and administrative aspects of child care and schooling to your remote Sigrid Personal Assistant. Whether it’s managing school emails and activities, choosing tutors and afterschool programs, monitoring exams and homework, or scheduling PTA conferences, your PA will stay on top of your child’s day-to-day school admin.

Business owners and team managers can also support their employees by providing personal and family assistance services to their employees. By offering the services of a remote Sigrid Personal Assistant to their employees as a work perk, employers can better support their workers and reduce the amount of stress in their lives. 

Many families were able to manage their households and remote work responsibilities more efficiently during the pandemic by delegating tasks to their remote family assistants. You can extend this work perk to your employees even after the pandemic to help them better manage their work and personal lives. 

Employees who feel supported by their employers are more likely to be loyal and productive workers, and their hard work can positively impact your organization’s bottom line.

Client Spotlight: How Sigrid Helped Lee Yuanzheng Optimize Her Personal & Workplace Productivity

Lee Yuanzheng is the founder of A Space Between, a co-practice space designed for mental health and wellness professionals. She has been a client of Sigrid for several years now, and delegates an array of work and personal tasks to her dedicated VA and Team of Specialists.

Lee delegates a lot of administrative tasks to Anna, her Sigrid VA. These include meeting scheduling and calendar management. Anna also helps Lee run her many business projects, including her investments and the management of A Space Between. 

“I’m a very busy person with numerous business and personal commitments. Anna helps free up a lot of my time so that I can focus on more productive work,” Lee said. “And these days, with high employee turnover in my industry, work responsibilities need to be handed over to other employees when someone resigns.

“Since Anna handles operations management, she’s in charge of handing over the tasks to my other employees. This saves me a great deal of time and reduces my stress.”

Lee also shares her Sigrid VA with other family members, especially her Dad.

“When my Dad or I need to get in touch with a service provider, like a government agency or customer support for our phone plans, Anna takes charge of these tasks. She’ll correspond with these people or stay on the line with them until the issues are resolved.”

Overall, Lee appreciates the consistency and high quality of service provided by Sigrid.

“I love the consistency of the service provided by Sigrid,” she said. “They have all the training and documentation in place so that even if another VA has to handle my concern, this VA already knows my working style and expectations and can deliver the results that I want.”

Subscribe to One of Sigrid’s Subscription Plans and Get the Support You Need

According to the same Gallup report, stress among workers reached an all-time high during the pandemic, with 16% of respondents saying their health has suffered as a result of stress and other factors.

To support the mental health and overall well-being of your employees, consider subscribing to one of Sigrid’s virtual assistant packages. We provide world-class assistance to leaders and professionals in a variety of industries. 

Here are some of the work-related admin tasks and personal to-dos that can be delegated to your remote Sigrid Virtual Assistant:

Work Tasks 

• Calendar Management & Meeting Scheduling
• Travel Management
• Project Management Assistance
• Human Resources
• Bookkeeping
• Social Media Management
• IT Support

Life Tasks 

• Household Maintenance & Repairs
• Child & Family Logistics
• Personal & Family Agendas
• Bookings at Pubs, Restaurants & Hotels
• Activities & Entertainment
• Birthdays & Holidays
• Child Care & Schooling
• Home, Car & Garden
• Online Bills Payments
• Health & Personal Care
• Reminders About Important Dates & Events

Are you interested in learning more about how to hire a Virtual Assistant? Read our guide 'How to Hire a Virtual Assistant: A Complete Guide'.

Ready to start your journey with us? Book a consultation or test run our services. We currently offer the first 14-day period for free on all our subscription plans.