Outsourcing - Execution (4 of 4)
The final step to outsourcing your labor to virtual assistants is to consider an execution plan. The process of assigning, managing, and reporting needs to be well-defined and efficient. The more efficient this process becomes, the better you will be able to leverage their labor. This post will provide some ideas to make the execution process as streamlined as possible.Increasing Responsibilty
When establishing a relationship with a virtual assistant, it is important to begin with simple, straight-forward tasks that are easy to accomplish and equally easy to oversee. As the relationship grows over time, increase the level of complexity slowly. The key is to develop trust within the relationship and to understand of the specific characteristics and attributes of the employee. Initially you should be checking their work regularly to ensure the quality of work is consistent with your expectations. As the level of trust grows, you should be able to decrease you oversight to spot-checking. The less time you need to devote to oversight, the more valuable your relationship with your virtual assistant becomes.
Reporting
There needs to be some system of reporting in place from the onset. Ideally you should request a daily report of your VA’s activities and progress. This become much more important when hiring full-time assistants, as opposed to project-based situations. The VA should upload this report in the working environment, so you have a consistent log of activities over time. These logs can be used to make sure activities are consistent with your objectives, and to measure the productivity of the VA.
Time tracking is another nice reporting feature to implement. Many virtual working environment, such as BaseCamp, have the ability to track time associated to tasks. This kind of reporting would be preferred, as you could them pull various report quickly, when evaluating your VA’s work. If you opt for a working environment that does not incorporate this kind of capability, simple reporting in excel should suffice.
Repeatable Processes
If possible, concentrate on delegating repeatable processes to VA’s. By utilizing templates in the virtual working environments, you can easily delegate a long, detailed list of tasks very quickly. In doing so, you should be able to gather baseline data on how long each group of tasks takes to complete. Over time your assistants should become more efficiently at processing those tasks as well. It is unrealistic to assume that everything is going to qualify as repeatable, but you should take special notice to exploit these opportunities, should they arise.
Limitations to Outsourcing
There are some limitations to outsourcing that should be considered. You should never to the point where you are outsourcing critical information to your assistants. This would include any information that puts your organization at risk to being exploited. The following information should not be outsourced:
- Business Planning
- Strategy
- Banking Information
- Key Financial Data
- Key Accounts
That wraps up the series on outsourcing labor by utilizing virtual assistants. Hopefully I have passed on enough information to get the gears turning to the point where outsourcing becomes a viable alternative. Please feel free to chime in if you have any questions or additional information to share. I would like to make this series as interactive as possible, so others can benefit down the road. I will be following-up with a Q&A post to address specific questions that arose during this series.
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