Virtual Assistants fulfill many roles today that range from providing the right amount of support to engaging the right amount of expertise to help you prosper.

There often comes a time when a business owner has to make a decision regarding hiring someone to help manage the tasks involved in operating the business. But hiring that someone, though appear easy, is a crucial step which can get pretty challenging, mind-draining and time-consuming in itself.

So, before you start thinking of taking this crucial step, ask yourself these two questions-

a) What projects or tasks to assign to your newly hired employee?

b) How much budget can you allocate to this newly hired staff?

Answering these questions will not only help you determine exactly what is it that you are looking for but also how much cost your business can afford while hiring additional help.

Depending on your expectations from this employment, you have four options available such as temps, interns, full-time employees and virtual assistants (independent contractors that are paid for services rendered). But since temps and interns offer a short-term solution, we will discuss here about choosing between a full-time employee or virtual assistant which provides a more long-term permanent solution. Below I have mentioned some things to consider while comparing between hiring a full-time employee or a virtual assistant for your business.

1. Hiring a full-time employee requires providing an office space along with all the necessary equipment such as computers, fax, printers and much more whereas virtual assistants use their own office space (since mostly they work from home) thus saving you big bucks on buying and maintaining office supplies.

2. Since virtual assistants are independent contractors, you can always save extra bucks on payrolls, taxes, pensions, medical insurance etc. apart from saving money on office supplies by hiring a virtual assistant. Your other option includes keeping an in-house employee on full payroll along with paying for all the extra benefits.

3. In this age of globalisation, having a business availability 24/7 by hiring assistants from different time zones is another benefit you can get with hiring virtual assistants, in contrast to hiring full-time employees who will be working only 8-9 hours shift along with having sick days or vacation days as well.

4. It’s often hard to find the best talent in your work area if you are looking for an in-house employee, your only option? To make use of what’s available, whereas virtual assistants allow you access to the world-class talent without worrying about geographical limitations which after some time, feels like a team member who just happens to be working remotely.

5. Virtual assistants can strengthen your brand identity by increasing the engagement of your consumers way better than any full-time employees simply by creating engaging content, promotional posts and activities along with prompt responses to customer queries, all thanks to its active round-the-clock online presence.

6. In the professional world of virtual assistants, you only pay for the amount of work done. It means you don’t have to worry about employees sitting idly or coming late to office due to any traffic or weather conditions. It also means you don’t have to pay for sick days, vacation days or health insurance either.

7. Virtual assistants are often considered to be more dedicated and committed toward the positive execution of their tasks (since their very reputation and business success depends on it) than their full-time counterparts (who will get paid regardless of their efforts) in providing productive results while delivering quality value to their clients.

And apart from all these advantages over in-house employees, you would be surprised to know that virtual assistants, nowadays, can provide assistant to almost every functional area of your business from data entry to social media management to internet research to even administrative tasks. Some of the most popular types of virtual assistants available today are-

a) Real estate virtual assistants

b) Virtual data entry assistant

c) Social media marketing virtual assistants

d) Virtual bookkeepers

e) E-commerce virtual assistants

f) Virtual assistant writers

g) Virtual administrative assistants

h) Technical/WordPress assistants

And the list goes on…

Virtual assistants share one common goal despite all these diversities, and that is to provide you with an excellent and all-round service to help accomplish your goals.

Though there will come certain times where it will make more sense to hire a full-time in-house employee rather than going for virtual assistants but before you make any haste, be sure to check out on all the pros and cons along with keeping in full view the above-mentioned points to help you make better decisions for your business.