Your choice of assistant impacts your ability to achieve your goals. They work alongside you, creating space for you to focus on what matters. And that requires a lot of them.
Without high levels of efficiency, things fall through the cracks and goals remain elusive.
So here’s the question:
Could a virtual assistant be more efficient than an in-office assistant?
In previous years, the consensus would have been “no,” but with the pandemic, the tide has begun to shift.
According to an Owl Labs report, 44% of companies worldwide did not allow remote work before the pandemic.
However, a recent survey by Gartner found 74% of CFOs anticipated keeping at least some of their team remote after the pandemic.
Organizational leaders are seeing a new way to do business. And it’s an efficient one!
A conglomerate of companies including Best Buy, Dow Chemicals, and British Telecom reported that their employees have been 35-40% more productive while working remotely.
How might this information influence your hiring choices?
Why Virtual Assistants May be More Efficient
1. Working from home cultivates an entrepreneurial mindset
When working from home, your assistant does not have you over their shoulder checking in on them and providing every next step.
For achieving high levels of freedom in your life, you need a self-starter. An ideal assistant takes initiative and pursues your goals as their own.
The remote work environment is the perfect space for cultivating this mentality. You can’t be hands-on, so a motivated assistant will adapt, learning to identify your needs even before you do.
As an added benefit, employers convey trust in their employees when they allow them to work remotely.
Multiple Surveys have shown increases in productivity when employees feel that they are trusted by their employers. When trusted, people feel good about themselves, their work, and their employers.
2. Working from home allows employees to create their ideal environment
Noisy coworkers, uncomfortable chairs, and a thermostat that is never at the right temperature – employees have limited control over a shared office space.
At home, however, employees can choose a space that is comfortable and void of distraction.
Do they work best in slippers with their household pet at their feet? Are they able to focus the best while sitting on the porch? With the freedom of choice, your at-home assistant can design their environment for maximum efficiency AND comfort.
An article by Forbes cited a survey that found employees who worked at home full-time were 20% happier than their counterparts (using a scale of 1 to 10).
And how does happiness affect productivity?
In their article, The Happiness Dividend, the Harvard Business Review referenced a decade-long research project that found happiness in employees lead to a 31% rise in productivity.
Working in a comfortable home environment seems to correlate to more hours worked per day by employees. CNN reported findings by NordVPN which showed employees in the US, Canada, Austria, and the UK have been working 2.5 more hours per day while working at home.
3. They are not subject to office bureaucracy
When working in a shared office space, your assistant may be hampered by employees stopping by with distracting questions and conversations. When something disrupts the workflow of the office, your assistant is affected as well.
In an isolated home environment, the assistant is protected from being pulled into unnecessary meetings or asked to do favors for other team members.
Free from the pressures of office politics, your remote assistant can focus exclusively on your highest-priority tasks.
What Assistant is Best for You?
Are you considering an Executive Assistant? Feel free to jump on a Discovery Call with us.
We’ve designed our Discovery Calls to equip you to make the best choice for your future assistant!
With Superpowers Match, we find your ideal Executive Assistant, train them, and ensure their success through our hands-on support and resource network.
If Superpowers is a good fit for you, great! If not, you’ll leave knowing what to do next.
