Training your Virtual Assistant

Training your Virtual Assistant

Generally speaking, your new Virtual Assistant is an experienced professional and will be able to complete many tasks for your business straight away, with no training. However, every business has it’s own specific tasks, tools, processes and procedures and it’s incredibly important that these are communicated to your Virtual PA effectively. This is something that we’ve touched upon in our Virtual PA Guide, but we will talk about it in more detail here.

If possible, try and think about business specifics ahead of hiring a Virtual Assistant. It’s important to invest a decent amount of time to training as it will help things run smoother and more efficiently later on. Your training should include details about your business to give them a better understanding. Regardless of what your business is, explaining the finer details will always be useful to a Virtual Assistant. Even if you don’t feel that your business has specific tasks, procedures or software, you may wish for your new Virtual Assistant to handle customers in a specific way. Perhaps you have customers that you handle differently, or ones who are more demanding. It’s essential to pass all of this information on to your Virtual PA.

Here are some quick training ideas to get you started.

  1. Meet your Virtual Assistant in person for a training session. It may sound simple, but this is very effective if your Virtual Assistant is local. Not only is face-to-face communication richer, but it may be easier to pick up on potential misunderstandings or difficulties. You can also physically show them any software systems or filing systems.
  2. Create training documents and share them via Dropbox or Google Drive.  These don’t have to be too fancy, as long as the content is good. Sharing them on Dropbox or Google Drive helps set the idea that these are ‘living’ documents that should be updated and shared regularly as the business develops. This could be a task for your Virtual Assistant to complete! Along with making them look more attractive.
  3. Create training videos and share them with your Virtual Assistant. You can upload these to Youtube and mark them as private so that only your VA has access. You can either use your own video camera to film or use screen capture software such as Camtasia. Either way, it is important to split videos so that each covers one single task and is no longer than 10-15 minutes.
  4. Schedule a conference call. You may wish to set a few times and dates specifically dedicated to training. You can guide your VA over the phone or Skype and they can ask questions immediately.
  5. Use remote access software such as LogMeIn or Join.me. This type of software is ideal if your Virtual Assistant is not local as it allows you and your Virtual Assistant to screen share and access each other’s PCs remotely. Your Virtual Assistant can learn by watching or can demonstrate their understanding with you watching them complete a task.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. It’s always good to remain open-minded with training. Your VA may be able to offer alternative methods of completing tasks that may work well.