by Erica John in Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs have a strict working schedule, which makes it very difficult for them to give equal time to all functions of their startups. The success of their business depends on prioritizing essential tasks and delegating secondary ones to remote workers present in less developed countries. It helps them to save both time and money as hiring the in-house experts is way too costly.

At the start, some businessmen try to perform every task on their own, like attending meetings, responding to emails, content management, and social media postings. But, with time, everything becomes overwhelming, and they start performing poorly at most of the activities. It calls for delegating some of the tasks to virtual assistants like:

1. Administration (email management, contacts handling, invoicing, travel management, scheduling, project tracking, expense management)
2. Research
3. Proofreading
4. IT & Design
5. Digital Marketing

Now we will discuss how you can delegate tasks to your virtual assistants VAs to get the best results:

Identify Tasks First

The very first thing you will need to do is to identify which tasks you will do yourself and which ones you will assign to your distant employees. Enlist all of your daily tasks and review each of them. It’s better to start with those activities which take most of your time. It would help if you kept all the clerical duties related to paperwork on top of your list. Another critical factor in deciding which tasks to delegate is based on their significance; keep all the primary functions to yourself and assign secondary ones to others.

Set Clear Expectations

After you have identified the tasks and delegated some of them to your freelance virtual assistants, it’s best to set clear expectations right from the beginning. It includes specifying essential things like working hours, reports, communication channels, deadlines and others. Carrying out this activity will help your VAs to set their priorities right at the start of the day and complete their tasks as per schedule. It will also assist them in knowing the processes of your company and adapt to its culture in no time.

Utilize Strong Communication Methods

Working in different time zones simultaneously presents a large number of challenges. Communication is a critical factor in the success of any business. When it comes to a remote setup, it plays an even important role, although modern tech has made it easier to talk to your distant employees through online messaging and audio and video calling.

Keeping in touch with your workers helps them keep themselves up to speed through regular meetings and assist VAs to keep track of their performance through one-on-one coaching sessions. Constant communication gives your virtual assistants an impression that you consider them as a crucial part of your business and that they are essential to the success of your enterprise.

Set Deadlines

Set up fixed time frames and deadlines for completion of various tasks like content production, email marketing, data entry, Search Engine Optimization, and more to get the most out of your outsourced VAs. It will help you in tracking the progress of your virtual assistants when clear cut deadlines are in place.

Give Regular Feedback

Unlike your in-house staff who you can regularly talk to face-to-face, the remote workers will need constant feedback from you so that they would know how they are doing in their daily tasks. You can put them on the back for their excellent efforts, and you can also suggest how they can perform better.

Delegating some of your business activities to the remote working VAs is a challenging endeavor. However, with the guidelines mentioned above, you are bound to make the best out of your virtual assistants.

Competent Remote employees platforms like this platform which, aims to connect entrepreneurs and startups with highly efficient distant workers like virtual assistants, customer support representatives, content writers, and others by providing them with a fully functional office space.