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According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the average small business owner spends up to 40% of their time on routine administrative tasks. If you do not want to wind up as a statistic you have two choices—hire an employee or a virtual assistant. Both choices share the same goal in reducing your involvement in day to day operations; however, the ball is in your court in the way you choose to go about handling this situation.
Employee: An employee is someone who performs services for you and you control what will be done and how it will be done. You are responsible for training this person and they must be paid for the agreed upon hours (even if you do not have work for them to perform). An employee is someone who is solely dedicated to your needs and can be called in whenever you need them. As a business owner you must withhold income tax and your portion of social security and Medicare taxes. You must give your employees a W-2 Form, Wage and Tax Statement, showing the amount of taxes withheld from their pay.
Virtual Assistant: Think of a virtual assistant as a consultant. When you hire a virtual assistant you own the rights to control or direct the result of the work, but do not have a say in what means or methods are used in accomplishing the task. Virtual assistants typically have their own business (i.e. they determine their own price, hours, etc.). You are only required to pay them for hours that they work (typically on an hourly or project basis). You do not need to train a virtual assistant because they are already qualified for the position ( they typically perform work under a specific niche-i.e. marketing) and again when hiring a virtual assistant you have no say in what methods they use in accomplishing the task you hired them to complete.
In order to keep yourself from being in trouble with the IRS, keep in mind that an employee is someone who performs services for you and you can control what will be done and how it will be completed. When you hire a consultant you own the rights to control or direct the result of the work, but do not have a say in what means or methods are used in accomplishing the task. If you fail to understand the difference between an employee and a consultant you will be subject to paying not only back taxes and penalties, in addition to all the other expenses that the person would have had as a fulltime employee, including overtime and benefits.
Although I am bias towards hiring a virtual assistant, I seriously do hope that you are able to hire someone—regardless of whether it be you hiring an employee or virtual assistant to handle your administrative tasks so you can devote more time to your craft—after all isn’t this why you went into business?
I too am biased to hiring a virtual assistant. For two years, I was an administrative assistant for two sister companies. I started my consulting business four years ago, and now service several small, medium, and large business (2 of which are the companies I was previously employed by). My clients benefit from my services for a few reasons. I handle the overwhelming, meticulous, and somewhat "boring" tasks. I handle all these tasks out-of-sight out-of-mind which allows my clients to decrease their stress level, return to their craft, and increase their bottom line. They won't pay an employee for an 8-hour day, when the tasks take only a few hours a week. Virtual Assistants may not work with every business structure, but its a service definitely looking into-especially in this economy.
Thanks for commenting! I run a consulting firm that specializes in providing market research and virtual assistant services. I do feel that there will be a surge in larger companies using more services such as ours because we do tend to be more cost effective.
If you would like to free yourself from business loan, BPOVIA must be your good choice.Please visit www.bpovia.com
We are using BPOVIA’s service. They are simply great. Their hourly rate is below $10 per hour.
BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant service provider ever been
nominated for "Red Herring 100 Asia" Awards 2008.
There are hybrid-ish services out there too. Some places like staffinseconds.com offer you the option of a dedicated 40 hour/week virtual employee, but you pay on a contract basis as they are still employees of Staff in Seconds.
I think that virtual assistants are a great fit for small businesses in the service sector or online sector that can't afford to hire expensive dedicated employees and don't have the infrastructure to deal with the legal implications. If my online venture ever gets off the ground, I'll definitely be looking to outsource some work to virtual assistants.
Brian, thanks for your comment. I wrote this post because I have come across a lot of small businesses that are not familiar with the virtual assistant concept (i.e. the work they perform). I have a calculator on my website that allows people the opportunity to compare the costs of hiring an employee and how much it would cost to hire a virtual assistant. Small business owners would definitely be amazed with the money they save.
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