VIRTUAL EMPLOYEE: Is it really effective or is just a hype?

If you own a business, then you surely know that the growth of a company largely depends on the quality of your employees. If you think that the quality of your employees in the office are not contributing enough for your business to reach its goal or you plan to make your team more productive and focused, hiring a virtual employee can be the answer to your dilemma.

The trend of hiring a virtual employee is quickly spreading and has been proven to be more effective in business that wants specialized employees and to provide an uphill growth rate.

To know more about increasing your business growth with a specialized team of virtual employees, we first need to understand who virtual employees are.

Who are virtual employees?

A virtual employee is someone who works for your company without actually sharing the same office space and works remotely for the sole purpose to help you grow your business and is a relatively new concept in the human resource world and it can prove to be one of the most efficient ways to increase productivity and decrease your office costs. A virtual employee does not have to be hired as a regular in-house employee. S/he can be working as a freelancer and you can assign tasks on a specific fee. Virtual employment provides you with the privilege to have a specialized employee and at the same time handle all of your different tasks.

It is predicted that 38% of full-time staff will be working as virtual employees in the next decade.

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How to determine when to hire a Virtual Employee?

Many business persons are unsure when to hire a virtual employee and find it hard to determine the right time to hire one. Actually, the right time is now. If you feel the need for a specialized employee to work on one of your projects or need an assistant to handle your emails and texts, then there is nothing much to think about it. But if you find yourself unsure then here are a few points that will help solve your confusion.

You are wearing many hats at a time

You find your company growing and you seem to be doing too much work by yourself, which in turn is cutting down your time to strategically plan further for the growth of your company. It is time to hire a virtual employee. It could be just to reply to your emails and text messages or handle a whole project, you can always find the right person to join your team from anywhere across the globe to help you focus on your business growth and yet do all the tasks on time.

You need more specialized employees to handle different parts

You might want to create a website for your business or create social media handles to promote it. If it was 10 years prior to now, a non-professional would take care of your social media and webpage, but now you have the privilege of hiring a virtual employee as per your requirement and criteria to accomplish your goal. Your social media handler will make your social media pages’ look polished and your web developer is going to make things just the way you want it to be.

Steve Jobs said that, “We hire people who want to make the best things in the world” So people who you choose to be in your business must want to contribute the most to your business.

Workplace confines the creativity of workers

If you are thinking of starting a business and do not want to own an office space, which will cost you money, space and confine creativity of your employees then the virtual employee is the best way to execute your thoughts. The liberty that virtual employment gives to a person is they can work in the environment they like and in the time that proves to be the best for them, which in turn will directly increase their creativity and help your business flourish.

You are spending too much money on your work area

We understand that renting a space to have your office set up, buying furniture, maintaining the office area and having many workers in the same place is too much extra work and a loss of your money. So when we have an option that frees us from all this chaos then, why not?

This does not sum up all your understanding about what virtual employee is, to know more please read below.

There are a lot of obvious and unseen benefits both the employer and the virtual employee can grab by creating an opportunity for virtual employment.

Benefits of hiring virtual employees

According to research by Cardiff University in 2017, 73% of workers in the United Kingdom said that they put in more effort than is required when working from their home.

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This data shows us that both the employers and the employees put in more effort into the business if they are given opportunities to work more flexibly and remotely.

As already mentioned above there are a lot of benefits like more productivity and efficiency, less expenditure, more specific services, more creative workers. But apart from the apparent benefits, there are a lot more hidden advantages of using Virtual Employment.

Choose best talents

Virtual employers have a large pool of talent to choose from. Sometimes as an owner of a business, you might not have your office space in a location that offers you a lot of talented people to choose from which means it doesn’t have the best employees that want to work in a particular project. In a traditional office system, it would be of no use if the employee who has specific qualifications/skills that we need was residing in another city(forget about another country) and was not willing to move into your place which would result in the business having to compromise in the best. Now, when it comes to a virtual employee, the employer can pick out the best and the specific employee they want from anywhere around the globe to work for their business.

Space Management

When you have hired a virtual employee you do not have to think of managing the space, providing stuff needed or giving services or other facilities. So, comparatively it is easier to manage virtual employees.

Especially when it comes to web developers and web designers you can find the best virtual employee with specific qualifications for your company through virtual employment. Jobs like web developing, web designing and graphic designing can prove to be more effective than the other works from a virtual employee. Some companies like DesignPac offer you services where you can rent a web developer or a designer as per your requirement for a short term or long term.

According to web designers in the US, “Designing is not what it looks like or what it feels like, Design is how it works.” We all should understand that hiring a good designer does not only make our website look good but it increases the quality of the website.

Efficient & Productive

According to a study reported by the Harvard Business Review has confirmed that working at home boosts productivity among employees. The research was conducted for nine months where the workers of the Chinese Travel Center, were split into two groups where half the employees were set in their office to work from and a half from their homes. The half who were at the office was clearly seen to be more productive in terms of self-reports and objective criteria; the employees said they were much satisfied with their jobs and felt to be more productive. Also, the business saved a lot of money, more amount of work was completed and fewer days of sick leaves were taken.

This along with many other researchers have concluded that working remotely increases worker productivity and benefits the business.

Make More Profit

When employees work remotely from home or somewhere else, the space that they occupy in the office is automatically free for someone else to work on, or if a large number of workers have been working remotely the office space can be reduced by half while being used for something. When the workers are less all the things that need to be in the office i.e. table, chair, stationery stuff, etc are not required, thus the cost is minimized. Also, the services required by the employees is less. This helps the business to reach its ultimate goal and make more profit.

Better Job Satisfaction

Because of the time they get to save from traveling to and back from the office every day, virtual employees claim to have better work and life balance and save time for themselves. One of the major factors that contribute to higher job satisfaction is when employees are able to balance their work and life. Due to the flexibility and freedom that allows them to make their own work schedule the employees have higher job satisfaction compared to the in-house workers. On the basis of a report from TINYpulse, an employee engagement firm in the U.S. employees who worked remotely had an average job satisfaction score of 8.1 compared to the in-house employee whose job satisfaction score was 7.4.

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We can clearly see the difference in job satisfaction among virtual employees and in-house employees.

All these benefits ultimately contribute to the goal of the business i.e. to make a profit, increase productivity and decrease costs. Therefore, the virtual employee is not just a ‘thing’ that most people are talking about but is an effective idea to reach higher business goals.  

Some Places to find Virtual Employee

There are many sites where you can find virtual employees fit for your company who are willing to contribute to your company.

Among a large number of sites some sites are listed below:

Virtual Content Assistant

Springzo offers high-quality content that will upgrade your level of business towards powerful marketing. They provide you with SEO- friendly, original and highly engaging content, written by expert writers with prepared contents that include content for SaaS companies, startups, e-commerce stores, agencies, marketplaces, service-based businesses, consultancies and more. If you want good content for marketing your business, you should definitely test them.

Virtual Web Experts – Programmers & Designers

DesignPac is helping businesses to grow by expanding their services, growing their web presence, and iconizing brands. One of the best things that DesignPac has to offer you is, you can rent your own virtual web developer/designer, graphic designer, content writer and many others who directly work with you on a one-to-one basis through DesignPac and you can pay for the services in a monthly, weekly or on an hourly basis which gives you more flexibility to choose from your options based on what kind of virtual assistance you want and how you want to pay.

Virtual Social Media Manager

$99Social is a site that provides services to handle your social media accounts in just ninety-nine dollars. Here, a dedicated Social Media Manager Content Specialist will post relevant content on Facebook and Twitter once every day in your social media that engages, energizes and helps you expand your customer base. The best part of 99-dollar social is that, the price i.e. ninety-nine dollars per month which makes it affordable for small businesses and institutions that do not have a huge budget to effectively use it for their benefit.

Virtual PPC Manager

MassCampaign helps you set up and manage Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Bing, and Yahoo paid campaigns for startups, solopreneurs, and small businesses. It offers unlimited paid campaign services for lead generation, re-marketing, and e-commerce. Their works include creative design (non-animated graphic), campaign planning, keyword research, keyword planning, ad copywriting, ad group categorization, campaign build, campaign setup, conversion tracking setup, and optimization. The campaigns they build and setup are carefully strategized, planned and executed by experienced professionals.

Virtual Assistant

Zirtual balances your work and your life. If you are an entrepreneur, a professional or a small team that requires a Virtual Assistant then there is nothing to worry as you have Zirtual Virtual Assistant in your palm. Virtual Assistants have all the skills that are required to handle your work-life and your personal life. It helps you to focus on the bigger picture of life by taking care of the smaller details. Your Zirtual Virtual Assistant can help you complete your research and reports, schedule and plan, book travels, handle social media and many more. If you ever need a virtual assistant, Zirtual is a name worth remembering.

These are some of the best listed virtual employers in different fields of work. These can help you find a job as a virtual employee or help you find a virtual employee to work in your business.

If at any point in your business, you feel the lack of some expert or need some assistance, you should definitely try to seek out a virtual employee. Virtual employees are much easier to find, are cost-effective and are more productive. You might find difficulties to find the right employee in the beginning but once you find the right one halfway across the globe, you will be impressed by how productive and efficient virtual employees can be. Not just that, but I’m sure you will re-think the concept of the productive sphere called an “office”.