How to Work with a Virtual Assistant (Tips from a VA and OBM)

Working with a Virtual AssistantVirtual AssistantHiring a TeamBusiness Tips

Aug 17

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One of the most intimidating pieces of hiring a new team member is how exactly do you work with them. You have this new person available to help you with tasks and projects, but what do you send them? How often do you check in with them? Do you go back and check their work? What all do you give them access to?

It can be very scary giving out login information to someone you basically just met, which essentially gives them access to your entire business you’ve spent (probably) years building up to the point where you could even hire someone in the first place!

I get it! It might actually be more than a little scary. If you haven’t checked out the first part of this post on how to hire a new virtual assistant, I recommend starting there. Then pop back over here and we’ll chat all about working together, alright? 😉

Let’s get to it!

Building Effective Communication

Effective communication is probably the most important piece of the puzzle. It needs to be defined early on in the working relationship. There is always a chance for signals to get crossed or a misunderstanding. But this is where we want to make sure those things are few and far between.

Selecting Your Communication Tools

The first way to do that is in selecting your communication tools. Do you prefer to communicate via email? Via voice message? Via a messenger-style app? What works best for you and the way you work? Which format supports you in not losing messages or forgetting to reply to them? There are a ton of options out there and your new VA will probably have their own preferences as well. Choose one you both agree on so that you’re both comfortable using it and can use it effectively.

Slack seems to be the industry standard at the moment. It is a messaging platform that also has video messages (with screen share), and voice memos, and they’ve recently added a whiteboard-type feature for quick notes.

Establish Communication and Response Times

Next, you’ll want to establish communication and response times. And this goes both ways. Not only do you want to have a time frame in which you can expect to get updates from your virtual assistant, but you also want to make sure they have a time frame in which they can expect to hear from you.

This can be whatever you need it to be. You don’t have to be on call for your VA 24/7 (and they don’t need to be on call for you 24/7 😉). But what is your general reply time? Is it 24 hours? Is it anytime M-F? Is it a couple of hours? It can be whatever works for your schedule and business, but you need to establish the guidelines so you’re both on the same page.

Create A Communication Plan

Finally, create a communication plan to stay organized. If you give your virtual assistant some information in a Slack thread, what happens next so it doesn’t get lost in a stream of chatter? Are they responsible for adding it to your task manager? For writing it on their to-do list? Are you responsible for adding it to the task manager?

There are few things worse than sending (or receiving) a message with a date update or something that seems relatively small, and then that message getting lost before anything is done with it. So work with your VA to decide what your plan is going to be to make sure those little things that pop up are prioritized appropriately.

💡Pro Tip: You can connect ClickUp with Slack so that you can automatically send messages in Slack to ClickUp as tasks and assign them to a team member so they don’t get lost!

Managing and Delegating Tasks

The next most important part of working with a virtual assistant (or any new team member) is delegating. What exactly are they going to do for you? What tasks are you going to give them? If it’s an OBM (online business manager) you’ve hired, what areas of the business are they going to manage?

This is important for two reasons. 1. They obviously need to know what parts of the business are their responsibility. And 2. You need to know what is going to be less hands-on for you. Once you delegate something to your new team member, stop doing it! I don’t mean stop paying attention to it, I mean stop doing it. We’ll get into the difference here in a sec.

Delegating tasks effectively

Delegating tasks can be one of the most challenging things to do when you hire a new team member. I know it sounds counterintuitive, right? You hired someone so that you could delegate, why would it be difficult to actually give them things to do?

Because up to this point, you’ve probably been doing everything yourself. So it’s easy to fall into the mindset of “no one can do this thing as well as I can”. And yes you might have to show them how to do what you want. But the key to a good working relationship with your virtual assistant is trusting them to do what you hired them to do.

Now, how to delegate for optimum efficiency. This also includes delegating so that you can spend more of your time on money-making tasks in your business, and less on general administrative work.

The first thing I recommend doing is listing out all the things that don’t require you. This could be updating metric spreadsheets, replying to customer service emails, or even scheduling social media posts. Anything and everything that doesn’t require your specific knowledge of what you do. List it.

Now, go through and circle or highlight the things on that list that you hate doing or that take you a substantial amount of time. Those are the things I want you to start delegating to your VA.

This will help in two ways: You don’t have to do those time-consuming things you hate anymore. And it frees up that time for you to focus on things that will actually bring more revenue into your business.

Providing constructive feedback

Now, while I want you to make sure you’re giving your virtual assistant tasks to do and you’re letting them own those tasks, that doesn’t mean you never check in on them.

I also 100% fully support the owner and CEO of a business (that’s you!) knowing how to do everything and what’s being done, just so you know it’s being done right. It’s fine if you don’t want to do it, and hire it out. But you still need to understand what’s going on in the backend of your business.

That said, be sure to provide regular constructive criticism to your virtual assistant. This could look like a quick Slack message to say “Hey! Thanks for posting the blog today, but next time, let’s follow xyz format so they all look the same". After a time or two, you’ll likely not need to check as often because they’ll know what you expect.

The same goes for anything else. Your virtual assistant knows that things in business change on a regular basis. So sometimes you’ll need to change the way something’s been done after a while. Discuss those changes with them and provide feedback as they start to implement them.

It’s always okay to provide feedback to your virtual assistants. If you want something done differently, just let them know. It also helps to keep the door open for them to ask you questions if they aren’t sure exactly how you want something done.

With both of those options open, you’ll be well on your way to a beautiful working relationship.

setting realistic deadlines

Deadlines! We all love to hate them, right? Some of us like to keep them loose. Some like to work by strict deadlines.

When you’re working with a virtual assistant, you need to have some sort of deadlines in place. They can be negotiable or flexible, but they need to be there. And the deadlines go both ways, not just for your VA.

If you have to give content to your virtual assistant in order for them to complete their work, for example, blog content or show notes, then it’s just as important for you to give them that work on time as it is for them to get it posted or scheduled on time.

Obviously, schedules change and things come up, but it’s important to set deadlines and do your best to stick to them. Your VA is as reliant on you to provide content on time as you are on them to complete their tasks on time. This is also where communication is super important if something is going to be a little late.

Cultivating a Positive Working Relationship

As we all know from our working experience, whether that’s always been in online entrepreneurship or you used to work a regular ‘ol 9-5, a positive working relationship is probably the most important thing you can have with your virtual assistant. Maybe I should move this section to the top. 🤔 If you and your virtual assistant are on positive terms and have mutual respect for each other, you can figure out all the hard shit together.

Fostering Trust and Mutual Respect

Fostering trust and mutual respect is something that has to be done from day one. And it obviously comes from both sides. This includes showing up to the discovery call on time, paying invoices on time, providing content for projects on time, and so on. It also includes understanding if schedules need to change and helping to make adjustments to project deadlines. Working with your VA in a way that allows them to feel appreciated and like they are making a difference, not just working for another manager at another job.

Recognizing and Acknowledging Your Virtual Assistant’s Contributions

It also helps to occasionally recognize and acknowledge your virtual assistant’s contributions. Did they go above and beyond on a project? Did they work a few extra hours to help finish up a launch? Did they share a new method of doing a task with you that now saves you extra time every week? Or that brings in extra money?

Be sure to recognize them for their contributions to your business. Yes, paid invoices are wonderful (and necessary) but the acknowledgment of hard work goes a long way to help build loyalty and trust with your virtual assistant. And when you’ve found one that clicks with you and understands your business, you’ll want to do your best to hang on to them.

Addressing challenges and conflicts professionally

This is also key to a happy working relationship with your virtual assistant. It’s important that both of you can address challenges and conflicts professionally. Because they will come up.

The most important thing here really is open communication. Can your virtual assistant come to you with anything that’s bothering them about the relationship or the work? Do you feel like you can go to them? If something bad happens to the work (website crash, checkout pages not working, etc) can they come to you for support?

I think it’s important as well, in the beginning of the working relationship, to set up guidelines for how to handle these more sensitive situations. If your VA needs to talk to you about something, should they schedule a call? Send an email? Message you in Slack? Decide on this now so if the moment comes up, they aren’t afraid to reach out to you.

Conclusion

Adding a virtual assistant to your team can be one of the best investments you make in your business. But it’s important to know how to work with someone who both has and needs the freedom and flexibility to complete their work as expected, but who also needs some guidance as to how you like things done in your business. It’s a delicate path. But once you and your VA are on the same page, it’s a business relationship truly unlike any other.

xx,
Delana

PS: Ready to add a virtual assistant to your team? I’m currently taking applications for new clients! Imagine having those pesky tasks that take up all your time (that you should be spending on more important things) off your plate and handled professionally. Looks good doesn’t it? 😉 Apply below.

Apply to work with Delana