Managing A Virtual Secretary For Maximum Productivity Levels

Virtual assistants can make the average business owner’s life exponentially easier. These remote workers take care of the necessary everyday tasks you waste much of your day completing. As long as they know traditional conference call etiquette, they are sure to improve your time management capabilities. However, managing remote employees takes an entirely different set of management practices than the strategies you use to manage employees at the office. Find out how to manage a virtual secretary for maximum productivity below.

Start Small

After hiring your virtual assistant, make sure to start out by delegating small tasks that do not require much time to complete. Delegating tasks in increments of thirty minutes of work is a good practice for the first couple weeks on the job. After those thirty minutes are up, check back on the status of the task. Then, you can give feedback and correct mistakes before too much time has been wasted and too much damage has been done. This is one of the best practices for managing virtual employees in the first couple weeks of employment. Virtual secretaries are no exception.

Train Intensely

Train remote workers intensely before you allow them to work autonomously. This is a considerable time investment that, unfortunately, many business owners do not want to make. However, it will pay off in the end. Training a virtual assistant allows you to build a relationship with the employee, which makes managing them easier. It also allows your new remote employees to get used to their job responsibilities and find their place in your organization. This will prevent unnecessary errors and lead to better employee performance in the end. Make sure you consider this when deciding whether or not to train your new virtual secretary.

Stay In Touch

Maintain communication between manager and employee as frequently as possible. Communication is the number one difficulty when it comes to managing remote employees. If you do not communicate with your virtual secretary, you are making a mistake. You want to know who is trying to reach out to your business and what your schedule is for the coming day. You also want to know if your employee is struggling or has any questions or concerns to share with you. This will help you build a strong working relationship and make managing a remote secretary much, much simpler.

Use Timers

When managing remote workers, using timers is one of the most important strategies to ensure maximum productivity. These time management tools help to ensure accountability among virtual secretaries. Most free project management software options include these time management features. You will not be hard pressed to find one that does. Or, you can use a Getting Things Done pdf. Whichever method you select, this a must use strategy to ensure that your remote workers are as productive as possible and not a waste of business resources.

Protect Your Business

When you hire a virtual secretary, you need to take steps to protect your business. If you use an ecommerce platform, like Shopify, to host your online store, there are privacy tools that allow you to limit the information your employees see. Most of the business operations tools you use probably have these features that allow you to limit user access. If not, you may want to consider that and choose new solutions. Regardless, it is imperative that you protect your business information and trade secrets from your remote secretary. A remote assistant is a stranger, regardless of how long you train them or how many video conferences you have. Be sure to keep your business data private and secure, just in case someone turns out to be a different person than they claim to be.

If you are a small business owner, hiring a virtual secretary can do wonders for your busy work schedule. However, managing virtual employees requires tactics that are different from the strategies to manage employees at the office. The remote employee management tips mentioned above are some of the most effective remote management strategies in use by countless modern businesses. Let us know how these virtual employee management tactics worked out for you and your virtual assistant in the comments below.

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