How to Train Your Virtual Assistant [2022 Update]

Digitalization has made virtual assistants a necessary commodity. Small businesses and entrepreneurs prefer virtual offices rather than traditional offices, in an effort to cut costs.

However, there are a few things to remember before hiring a virtual assistant to make sure that your VA is set up for success. Traditional employees and virtual assistants can carry out many of the same duties including:?

• Setting up appointments
• Managing calendar
• Making calls
• Data entry
• Making travel appointments and preparations
• Social media marketing management
• Project management
• Email management
• Customer service

Virtual assistants also provide a long list of niche services depending on their skill set. So you can hire a specialized VA, regardless of your industry.

Beginner’s Guide to Training a Virtual Assistant

Training your VA can seem taxing at first, but it will be beneficial in the long run. If you have a strong training plan to follow, you can see a great return on investment.?

Set Aside the Time:?

Training takes time, whether it’s a traditional hire or someone remote. Business owners usually don’t invest enough time to train their virtual assistants. Training helps a new hire to adapt to your business, processes, and systems. Now the question is, how much time is enough to get your virtual assistant to start working? The 30x rule that most learning and development executives follow says that you should spend 30 times more on training your VA than you would take you to do the task yourself.

For example, if a task requires 20 minutes of your time, you should spend 600 minutes to train your virtual assistant how to complete it. It may sound absurd but it has been proven to be successful time and time again.

What Is the Role??

Prior to hiring a virtual assistant, it's critical to have a detailed job description that outlines all the responsibilities you require from them. Is customer support a part of this position, or does it only include management? Will the virtual assistant interact with any prospective clients? If so, what kind of communication abilities are required??

While employing a virtual assistant, it is imperative that you are upfront about the tasks you will be depending on them to complete. This is helpful when it comes to training.

Set Goals?

When introducing new employees to the team, it's important to set expectations. It's crucial to keep in mind that this stage is more about how things should be done than about what is actually done. Usually, expectations for punctuality and cooperation might be included.?

Although virtual assistants operate remotely, you might prefer them to maintain set office hours and be virtually present at a set time every day. You might have to communicate with external stakeholders or sign off particular tasks that must be done according to a strict timeline. All new employees will need to have all of these points explained to them in detail.

Give Written Instructions

Although this may sound obvious, the most crucial part of training a new hire is giving clear written instructions so that they fully comprehend what they need to do.?

Think of it like this. When you write a document and save it in a folder, your virtual assistant will be able to reference it whenever they get stuck.?

Project management softwares and web-based task management programs allow you to include written briefs for projects. They can also be used to give written instructions for new projects.

Share Video Recordings

Another effective way of training your virtual assistant is sharing video recordings with them. This is especially helpful for tasks that are technical and require specific software.

You can record yourself doing the task and share it with your remote employees. This way, you will not have to instruct your virtual assistant again and they will be able to reference back to the recordings for every step of the process.?

While video recordings are a great way of giving instructions to your VA, too much information can distract them from information that is actually useful. It is better to break down tasks in short video tutorials, not longer than 3-7 minutes.

Another benefit of making short video tutorials is that these videos can be reused for training new staff. Think about how much time and effort it will save when training a new hire and also retaining existing employees.

Keep Organized

If your training material is poorly organized, it will probably be a wasted effort. Make sure that your training material, be it video recordings or written documents, is kept in an orderly manner. You can save your material in a shared Google Drive so that everyone can access it at any point.

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