Creation of a VA – The Company’s Man-Making Approach

A company’s approach to transforming an employee into a Virtual Assistant is a careful process that deals with preparing one for a wide range of tasks.

Each individual brings a different style of a virtual assistant with oneself, i.e., all employees who become virtual assistants have a different style of operating. Some might be more polite than others who might be more professional.

The point here is: if a company is to create a Virtual Assistant, it must identify all these varied natures of the employees and mold it into a VA it can be proud of.

This works best when there is a defined set of tasks a VA can be expected to do. Most people assume that a virtual assistant is supposed to and can to anything. That is not true. This article will help you understand what tasks would virtual assistants perform for you.

If you are now clear with what kinds of tasks VAs do, you will know this for a fact:

One cannot simply become a VA at the first day of the job. This is a testament to how intricate the process of creating a VA is, not to say the effort a company must take to make this happen.

So, lets finally get into this:

Creation of a Virtual Assistant:

At the time of hiring, an employee possesses a certain set of skills which make him or her a valid candidate for VA training.

To proceed further you need to understand one point clearly: Any job role can be divided into two major parts: The Skills, and The Being.

It is the combination of what an employee does and how he carries that job role that makes him a professional. So, to make one a VA, the necessary skills and the importance being are first incorporated. That combined with experience is the perfect formula for creating a VA.

Maybe this will make it simpler:

The Skills (of a VA) + The Being (of a VA) + Experience (as a VA) = A Virtual Assistant

This of course can apply to most job roles as every employee is the combination of their skills and attitudes as say, a CEO, a Receptionist, a Janitor, a Writer, a Programmer, etc. So now you get it. To create a VA, one must work on their skills and their Being:

1. The Skills:  

A VA has to not only assist the client, but also has to ensure that all their responsibilities are well-managed and desired results are achieved. A General Virtual Assistant (GVA) will have the following tasks as a part of their job role:

• Time Management

• Email Management and Marketing

• Storing and Organizing Files

• Administrative Task Management

• Blog Management

The company will try to grow the employee’s skill set and teach them necessary How-To’s, thereby equipping them with all that is needed to perform work as a VA.

Of course, there are multiple subheads that fall under the above category that are too wide to get into here. If you’re interested in what all a GVA has to do, you can check it out here.

2. The Being:  

It is understandable that this sounds like a weird term for explaining how a VA is created. But it is only when an employee is taught how important it is to be a VA that they understand their job role.

You will feel appreciated at your job if you knew how important it is to be what you are supposed to be.

The following points are the first steps taken towards making a potential VA understand his or her job role:

The Importance of Being:

What the virtual assistant is at the most basic level, is an employee with two bosses. A VA works for both the company that hired it and the client it serves. The condition of the VA is different from most other serving professions because a VA is associated for a much longer period with both the bosses and in a much more involved way.

A VA is an asset to both the client and the employer.

Potential VAs are explained their accountability to both the parties and how they are expected to deal with it.

Spiritual Principles:

A virtual assistant is not an outsider or a call center to a client. Much like a Personal Assistant, a VA is part of their business.

Be it managing blogs or meetings, a VA is very much an integral part of their client’s work and must behave as such. Understanding that the client’s well-being and progress is both the VA’s and the employer’s progress is something each virtual assistant must know.

This is a spiritual factor as it deals with a VA knowing where his or her professional belonging rests.

And the answer is: with all parties involved.

Growth as a VA:

How you develop your IQ, skill and expertise when performing tasks at your workplace can be called as your growth as an employee. A VA’s growth is no different.

However, since the job role of a VA is quite unique, their growth can be said under such terms:

That moment when any VA’s Skills and Being start working in harmony is wherefrom their true growth begins.

After this point, expertise through experience must be the goal.

3. Experience:  

Through experience comes various skill sets that can’t be had without. As the expertise of a VA grows, following capabilities are seen in them. VAs while being trained are taught to look out for these skills and perfect them.

Following are some of them that they are guided through:

Earning Trust:

The world of business progresses on trust. Without trust not much would move forward. To grow the relationship between a VA and a client is the VA’s job. Trust can be and will be earned when a VA performs all responsibilities to the fullest and does it while being a support to the client.

There is nothing great about completing tasks for others when it is tedious for them to give it to you. Ease of operations and efficient completion of tasks will help a VA establish a good rapport with the client.

And, if there isn’t trust between the VA and the client, work won’t really get done, will it?

Matching clients’ level:

More often than not, every new client will expose the VA to environments they may be new to. In such cases, a VA has to understand a client’s complete set of requirements and assist accordingly.

Everyone has a different calibre setting when it comes to work, and constant imbalances between the VA and a client will hinder professional work.

It is the VA’s duty to match a client’s calibre to assist them effectively.

For example: a VA used to clients like college principals would need to raise their level of work if they were to assist someone of a higher calibre, such as a CEO of a major conglomerate.

Planning work:

Work will be taken from the client and distributed amongst various workers of the VA organization before tasks are completed. This means that at any given point, a VA will be responsible for the work being done by a few other colleagues including oneself. Coordinating and making sure the work gets done on time is a chief task of any VA. Hence, effective and efficient communication is a priority skill to have.

Client retention, Problem solving capacity:

While client retention is a skill that can be achieved through goodwill, positive services, and earning trust; problem solving takes practice, failures and a sharp mind.

To solve problems effectively one must:

• Understand all fields of work involved

• Make fast decisions

• Differentiate between priorities and unimportant matters

• Make necessary sacrifices

• Be cost effective

In many situations, people hire VAs when they are in dire need of solving problems or managing a business that is in a messy situation. A good VA must grow to meet these challenges, should they be put in such a spot.

Time-Saving, Organizing, Managing:

These attributes come towards the peak of a VAs experience, where he or she can effectively manage the work of multiple clients and organize them in such a way that all is completed with time to spare.

VAs must lookout for the first signs of them being able to manage tasks timely and recognize that they are doing a good job.

From this point on, confidence is the personal reward VAs get with every happy client.

The creation of a VA is an intricate man-making approach undertaken by the employer company. It is the combination of skills and being that, make a VA an asset to several people at once.

The growth of a VA is monitored to ensure no attributes are left behind.

The training process usually transforms an employee’s talent to skill, skill to productivity, productivity to quality output and eventually, quality output with speed.

So now you know what it takes to build these high performance virtual assistants. If you have any questions, please ask away. Our virtual assistants would be happy to answer!