Once you’ve given your VA access to your systems and set up some expectations about how you work together, you’re finally ready to hand over some work. Now come the challenges of training and delegating.
Hand over little by little
Most Australian VAs charge by the hour. It can be tempting to hand everything over in one big heap, but it’s risky. Learning one thing at a time is easier for the VA. It’s also easier for you since you don’t have to train them on everything at once.
Prioritise what to hand over when
You may already know what your main pain points are. Tasks you really don’t like doing. Things you’re not naturally good at. Those things which take up too much of your time. These tasks and jobs make up your master list of work to hand over. Now you need to prioritise that handover process.
Start with something which will make a difference to your life, but is relatively safe. The question to ask here is, ‘If something goes wrong, will it cause major issues?‘
Some suggested places to start include:
- data entry
- editing a document
- designing an email newsletter, or updating the content in an existing template.
As you can see, if there is a problem, it can be fixed before it does any damage. Compare that to the risk if you give someone access to your Xero account to create invoices, or let them answer emails from your account as if they were you. Both of those have an impact on the outside world before you can check them!
At the same time, you want to hand over something which will save you a reasonable amount of time.
Handing over includes training your VA
People hiring VAs often have unrealistic expectations about the amount of training that will be required. They’re busy, they don’t want to spend time and effort in training. They just want the VA to pick everything up straight away.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.
- Experienced VAs have worked with and know many software systems and platforms, but they don’t necessarily know every system you use in your business. Quite possibly they know Asana, not Trello, or Salesforce rather than Hubspot.
- Even if your VA has used your software, it may have been set up very differently. Most business software these days is very flexible, and you can’t expect your VA to know how you use it in your business. There is no shortcut here – you’ll have to spend some time taking them through your systems. On the plus side, an experienced VA can pick up most software quickly.
While you need to invest time in training your VA, there are some options to make it easier.
- If you’re training your VA via Skype or Zoom, you can record the call. That creates a how-to video for the process. Ask them to save all those videos and create a library. Store them on your cloud drive – or if the volume gets too big, upload them all to a private YouTube channel. (Get your VA to do this!)
This creates a reference for the VA, plus it’s useful for you if you ever need to change your assistant for any reason. - If you’re working when your VA isn’t available to watch and learn, you can use Loom to record your screen and a voiceover where you explain the task.
- If you or your VA don’t like video, ask them to transcribe the recordings and create written processes based on them. These processes are handy to have anyway. It’s often easier and quicker to read a process or review a diagram than it is to watch a video.
- Process templates and checklists are also helpful. These are a standard feature in project management tools like Trello and Asana.
Reviewing work and resolving issues
If you’re unhappy with the quality of your new VA’s work, deal with it straight away.
Just don’t assume it’s all their fault.
Very often it’s a question of communication more than fault. If you’ve been working on your own for a while, you probably haven’t needed to explain your processes, and without practice it’s easy to miss things out.
Sit down with your VA and go through what the issue was, what they did wrong. Be as careful and gentle as you can. Give them a second chance. Everyone make some mistakes.
There’s only a problem if your VA consistently gets things wrong. There is some time investment at the start, but if things aren’t getting easier, it may be time to consider a different VA.
The tips in our ‘Working with your VA’ series of posts should help you to be in a much better position when you get started with that new person!
And of course, whether you’re hiring a VA for the first time or looking for a change, let’s have a chat about how we can help.
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