Advantages of a freelance PA/Virtual Assistant
I have been a PA/Virtual Assistant for over 30 years, and for the last five have worked on a freelance basis from my home office. Often when I say I am freelance and virtual, people find it hard to grasp what tasks I can do and how I can possibly work efficiently for companies if I am not in their offices from 9 to 5 every day. What they fail to realise is that working on site for 8 hours a day will not get 8 hours work completed. There are lunch breaks, time out to grab a cup of coffee, time taken to chat to a colleague about their weekend and also time spent on their phone looking at social media.
A freelance PA/Virtual Assistant is self-employed which means we have lots of advantages over an employee.
- You don’t need to worry about paying for recruitment costs, holidays, sick leave, or a pension.
- They usually work from their own offices so have their own computers, printers, mobile phones, and software.
- They can be very affordable and of course a business owner’s hourly rate is almost certainly a lot higher than a PAs so you will be losing a lot financially by doing the job yourself!
- You don’t need to employ one on a full-time basis – they can be flexible, maybe working more hours in your busy periods and less at quieter times. You may choose to buy a set number of hours per month so you know you have paid for that time, or you may choose to contact them on an ad hoc basis when you need something specific doing.
- You don’t only have to work with one PA/Virtual Assistant – you can choose to work with one for your main administrative tasks and diary management, one for organising your meetings, taking minutes, and following up on actions, and another for social media management and more ‘technical’ tasks. We have all come from different backgrounds and so have a variety of specialities.
- A freelance PA/Virtual Assistant only bills for the time worked – I keep a track of my time in 15-minute increments on a spreadsheet and send this with my invoice.
I am an approved member of the Society of Virtual Assistants, and if I get asked to do a task that I am not an expert in, I will refer the client to another member who is.
Why not give it a try? There is no commitment, and we can make your life so much easier!!