If you are considering working with a Virtual Assistant, that is an exciting time!

But what can you expect when you start to outsource some of your work?

First, it is important to remember that your VA is not your employee or your sole assistant. Although you may only have one person helping you in your business, they are not typically working only for you. They are not your staff.

So managing your expectations as their client is important. In fact it’s the key to a great, long-term working relationship.

Here are a few tips that might help:

1. Scheduling Their Day

Virtual assistants have more than one client, and they manage their own schedule. While it can be tempting to send them work to do at 9 a.m. and expect to have it back by noon, that’s not a good way to try to work with a VA.

They have to manage their own schedule, and decide when they will do everyone’s work. Be clear with your deadlines and let your VA know when you need something done so that s/he can put it into their schedule appropriately and get it back to you when you need it.

2. Allow Enough Lead Time

Lead times are essential when working with a VA. Lead time is the amount of time that is in front of a task deadline; the time span in which the task can get done. For instance, maybe you have a newsletter that needs to go out on Thursdays. You can’t send that to your VA on Thursday morning and expect that it will get done properly. Lead time for gathering the parts of a newsletter to get sent out is typically at least 24 hours and may even be up to a week, depending on what you need to get done.

When you allow enough time for all of your tasks, everyone is able to slot the time into their calendar to get it done properly. And the team remains happy, not rushed or stressed!

Allow enough time for back and forth communication and scheduling when you are working on tasks and projects with others.

3. Response Times

Another thing you should expect as a client of a VA is to know their response times. As we have said, they set their own schedule and business hours, so be sure you know when your VA is working – and when they are not.

There is nothing worse (in my opinion) than sending a task to your VA and then not knowing if they received it or when they will get it done. Be sure they let you know how often they check email, when they are going to be out of office, and that type of thing.

Again communication is key here on both sides. You don’t want to be left wondering whether your VA got your task request, and make sure they aren’t wondering when you will approve work they have sent you, so everyone can continue to move projects forward.

There are many things that you will need to manage expectations around when you start working with someone who is not physically in your office with you.

The advantage to working with a VA is often that you are only paying for the time they are spending on your work (instead of a full-time salaried employee), but you still have to set your expectations and work within them to build a healthy collaborative relationship that works for both of you.

Want more tips on working with a Virtual Assistant?

If you want more tips about how to work well with a Virtual Assistant, be sure to LIKE my Facebook page, where I do a weekly Facebook Live training on Thursdays at 11 am Eastern. Let me know what you want me to talk about and I’d be happy to cover it for you!