Get Your Remote Hiring Right With a Great Virtual Assistant Onboarding Process

It may be easy signing up with virtual assistants, but onboarding them is no small task. Getting your virtual assistant onboarding process right is essential for building trust, greater productivity, and long-term success.

In this blog, we offer a step-by-step guide for an effective onboarding process for your remote hiring, tools to make the process easier, and how to prepare your business before onboarding VAs. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Follow the steps below to make the most out of your virtual assistant onboarding process.

Schedule a call on Google Meet or Zoom with your VA and kick off the integration process with an extensive employee orientation. This should cover an overview of your business processes, communication style, company culture, etc. This will let your VA understand their role in the context of the entire company.

You can use email introductions or video calls to let your new VA meet key stakeholders and teammates. This helps clear out the communication channels and build a supportive network while allowing a VA to get an idea about who’s who in this company.

Provide your VA a structured and well-planned onboarding program that contains step-by-step guides to the tools and system they’ll use. Clearly explain what tasks they are responsible for and what the KPIs are. This program should help them with the initial tasks and track progress.

Make sure that your VA can access all the resources and support necessary to effectively complete the tasks. This includes FAQs, detailed task guidelines, troubleshooting guidelines, and contact information of someone who can help ASAP. This will help your VA feel as a part of the team and resolve problems promptly.

To build a great working relationship with your virtual assistant you have to include routine (at least once a week) communication. These calls are excellent for figuring out the challenges one is facing. You can also get updates on progress made throughout the week. This will allow your VA to ask questions and clarify doubts.

Are you someone who dreads giving “constructive” feedback? If you are, you should know that most experienced professionals that we know prefer negative feedback. Staying impersonal at the moment of heat has become their habit, because one and only aim of these VAs is to help. Therefore, provide honest feedback and it will be appreciated.

This is the last step of the virtual assistant onboarding process. This takes place when you have become comfortable working with each other. Now you can integrate them into the business’s daily life. You can do it by giving them access to email chains, discussions, and meetings that were not necessary primarily. After this integration process, they can always stay in the loop and can manage tasks proactively.

Consider the following as well to make your VA onboarding process as smooth as possible:

As you are not in the same office there is no scope for reading facial expression or body language. You should fill this gap by going slightly overboard if you have to on the communication front.

Although any new employee will try to be as productive as possessive as soon as possible, you should start with one task. This will help you build a straightforward process for that task.

Along with the general training you should also think about any specific training that can help your new virtual assistant. This will also help decrease time to proficiency to a much greater degree.

Although the benefits of having a friend may seem intangible for a remote worker, it helps them get more engaged with work. You can pair people of similar hobbies, families, and age to get those friendships started.

If you want to hire a virtual assistant from premium service providers you can skip this step, however, if you are not, it is vital to help these remote workers develop skills like problem-solving, time management, etc.

From the get-go you should set long-term professional and personal development goals. It would increase their job satisfaction and get them more committed to your business growth.

Gather feedback from your new assistant about how their onboarding went and improve it. With regular improvements your VA onboarding process would remain relevant, responsive, and effective.

Do you know why many businesses mess their onboarding process up? They skip the preparatory part. Let’s take a quick look at the essentials:

Before the virtual assistant onboarding process begins you have to have a clear definition of their role. Figure out the specific tasks they will handle and have clear expectations and instructions so that from day one your VA’s effort aligns with the business objectives.

You should set up an easy process for regular communication so that you can make sure that your VA can ask questions without any resistance. Determine what communication channel you will use. For example, setting up a company email allows seamless VA integration into the team.

Before onboarding a virtual assistant you should ensure that they can have access to all the necessary tools they will need. This includes project management apps, scheduling tools, CRM systems, etc. You should also prepare to share sensitive business information if applicable.

SOP or standard operating procedures are documents that entail everything you want to outsource to the VA. They also act as a user manual for tasks that your company does. As it offers set-by-step instructions for each process it will help you to maintain quality control.

It’s good to have a personal info and preferences doc too, aside from SOPs. It contains information about yourself. For example, your full name, email address, your preferred calendars, the VIPs in your life, preferable meeting times, etc. It will help save considerable time in the long run.

Even if this is not your first time onboarding a virtual assistant, you should prepare yourself mentally by setting realistic and clear expectations for yourself. For example, a VA might take a little bit of time to get adjusted to your systems and sometimes you may also have to make adjustments.

You will be able to do this with the help of the previous section where we have discussed the process in detail. The necessity of this planning is to create a schedule that allows the new VA to receive all the new information without getting stressed. You should check in on the VA regularly during the process to support them.

The primary object of getting your VA onboarding process right is to help the new VA adjust to their new environment and integrate well into the company culture. This way they can become effective contributors to your organization and you can ensure greater (82%) retention.

Here’s a brief look at some of the reasons that make a proper onboarding important:

With this guide your virtual assistant onboarding process is likely to be more effective. It can make the candidate experience better and thus improve quality of hire by 70% and help increase your VA’s productivity. It is also a critical element in employee and employer relationships. With these onboarding best practices and tips for a remote worker you can create a fruitful and memorable virtual onboarding experience for your new assistants.