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How long should I plan on working with my virtual assistant?

How long should I plan on working with my virtual assistant?

That is the most common inquiry I get from current and potential customers, as well as interviewers. So, how long do you think virtual assistants will be around? The same "it depends" is always my response. There are a lot of factors at play. But first, we need to adjust our perspectives and become more deeper familiarity with the modern workforce.

Do you, as a small or home-based business owner, judge how long an employee stays in a position based on how long you stayed in your own position? The same goes for me. Stupid move.  When I make a decision, I follow through on it completely; I am not a quitter. Throughout my career, I have consistently held positions for many years. The lone exception will have to wait for a different story.

However, we must keep in mind that not everyone is the same as us. Current workers in particular. A lifetime career is a thing of the past, as I indicated in a previous post (http://www.teamdoubleclick.com/news/free_articles/workingwiththenewgeneration.html). As business owners, we have a tendency to overlook this fact, which causes us much frustration.

As I've already stated in this article, according to a recent survey, millennials leave their jobs after an average of 18 months. That's about as long as you can count on somebody to stay at a job, whether they work in an actual office or online. Let that idea percolate for a bit, and then I want to get to the "that depends" I was talking about.

It all depends.

Life is full of change, and that includes yours truly. Ours, yours, and the one of your digital helper

Consider why you wanted to leave your previous employer. Why have you had to change jobs so often in the past? Pregnancy, sudden despair, a loss in the family, a change in one's financial situation, a move, a new job, a desire to return to school, a sick parent, kid, or spouse? Yes, and there are a great deal more. As a human, your virtual assistant experiences the same range of emotions as you do. A virtual assistant may leave their current position for any of these or many other reasons.

Ability to get along with coworkers Work must be something you enjoy. We should be able to agree on that, right? If you don't enjoy your work, you won't give it your all, and you'll constantly be looking for something else. Like their in-person counterparts, virtual assistants can be targeted. I'm not referring to the phenomenon of a virtual assistant burning out and deciding she can't take the loneliness of the job, though that does happen. What I mean is all the work that goes into making a virtual assistant work. She can be expected to make cold calls, take messages, and enter data for a variety of customers. If she dislikes her current responsibilities, she may request a transfer or even resign from her position.

Leadership appeal.  One where I was handled like a prisoner in a concentration camp (i.e., my neck was breathed down) was the only one I didn't stick with for a significant amount of time. One day, I went out to lunch and never came back. Do you remember a time when you had a boss that you detested? Think of someone you've always disagreed with. Another possibility is the person you've always found odd or suspicious. Would you continue working for a manager who made you feel this way? Not at all! Even when we can't do it ourselves, we nevertheless expect that of our virtual assistants. With 6.6 billion people on the planet, it's safe to assume that not everyone will get along with everyone else. You probably won't even like any of them.

Then there's the Big, Bad Team Double-ClickSM, of course. Our mission at Team Double-ClickSM is to assist you in identifying your requirements for a virtual assistant, to find the ideal VA based on these criteria as well as other factors, to weed out any VAs that pose a threat to your business, to keep you apprised of any issues that may arise with your VA, to stand by our work, and to guarantee your satisfaction. Now, there are situations when the contracted virtual assistants do not enjoy this. Now is when "Big Bad Team Double-ClickSM" really takes over. You can trust us since we're on the side of good when it comes to hiring remote workers. We lose favor with a virtual assistant when we have to take away their job or ask them to pay for a client's damages because of their carelessness. Many virtual assistants give up because of this. In order to keep you, the client, safe, we may have to irritate certain people.

Theft.  Indeed, theft.  Team Double-ClickTM acts as an intermediary in the form of a virtual staffing agency. We strive to provide the finest service possible by helping our clients find competent virtual assistants. Unfortunately, theft does occur, even from seemingly honest virtual assistants. When times are rough financially, most people look for ways to bypass the middleman. Why?  Typically, the motivation is financial gain. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, a rival virtual assistant would try to poach a client from us so that they could earn more money. 

I don't think I need to explain how this could cause problems for other clients. Would you want to recruit someone with that kind of history right off the bat? Is there any way you can ensure they won't try to take something from you down the road? Not me, no way. And that reminds me of a good tale. Let's name her Jane, the virtual assistant who recently poached customer Dick from Team Double-ClickSM. Instead of getting into a drawn-out legal struggle with Dick and Jane, we decided to drop the matter. We naturally brought up with Dick the idea that Jane the Thief might relive her past in the not-so-distant future. Embezzling his money, Dick revealed to Gayle three months later, "Jane just stole from me. I felt awful for Dick, but we had warned him that something like this was possible. Dick ignored our advice and the wealth of data at our disposal.

Popularity.  Virtual assistants for Team Double-Click are independent contractors, not employees. We hold our contractors to the same standards, guidelines, and penalties as any other client would hold their contractors (think home builders, highway builders, or any other competitive bidder). Again, this can cause us to lose the favor of our virtual assistants and result in their departure. In the interest of client safety, do you really expect us to take any fewer precautions?

You can probably estimate how long a virtual assistant will stay in their employment by looking at the reasons why people leave their current jobs. The majority of our virtual assistants have been with us for less than a year, but over 25% have been with us for more than a year with the same clients the entire time. In fact, one of our virtual assistants departed from Team Double-ClickSM and her assigned client earlier this year after working with him for over three years.

Consequently, the question "how long can I expect my virtual assistant to stay with me?" arises. My standard response is, "It just depends. Assuming everything goes smoothly and the virtual assistant has no reason to quit, she is likely to remain in her position. It's all about cause and effect, as one of my daughter's teachers used to say.

The purpose of this post is to help you understand the modern hiring process and avoid common pitfalls. I'm hoping that's what happened. And maybe with that knowledge, we'll all be a little less taken aback and a little more prepared the next time one of our employees, whether physical or digital, decides to go.

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