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http://www.thevirtualworks.com/download/i/mark_dl/u/4011893629/4593831762/The%20Third%20Wave%20Of%20Virtual%20Work.pdf

Knowledge workers are now, able to perform tasks anywhere at any time.

First, some equate virtual worker with non-contributor. Not so! The quality of someone’s contributions to their team can’t be judged by their geolocation. Is anyone looking at the organization as a living entity, and asking which team members are instrumental in maintaining processes, relationships, and ‘team spirit’?

Using a virtual assistant can shave hours from your workweek, but knowing which tasks to delegate can be tricky, whether you're starting or growing a business. Most virtual assistants are contract or freelance workers who do their jobs from home and focus on administrative tasks that are similar to those of an executive assistant or secretary. Websites that specialize in contract workers, such as odesk.com and elance.com, have thousands of listings for virtual assistants.

With the number of virtual assistants are growing, their expertise now runs the gamut, making it easier to find someone who fits your organization, says Jaleh Bisharat, vice president of marketing at oDesk.com, which is based in Redwood City, Calif. In 2012, oDesk had 25,000 postings for virtual assistant jobs, compared to about 2,500 in 2008.

Entrepreneurs can use virtual assistants for everything from making vendor or customer service calls to sending out thank you cards to prospective clients. It's important to build trust, just as you would with a permanent employee. "They become a team member who just happens to work remotely," Bisharat says. Not sure where to start? Here are 10 ways you can use a virtual assistant to improve your business.

Bookkeeping: Keeping tabs on bills and other bookkeeping matters can be one of the easiest things to assign to a virtual assistant, says Kathy Colaiacovo, marketing director for the International Virtual Assistants Association, a Henderson, Nev.-based trade group. Many small businesses choose to share their bookkeeping systems with their virtual assistants who can then follow up on tasks such as outstanding invoices or unpaid bills. "You will need to hand over some control [including] passwords and access to accounts," Colaiacovo say

Online Research: You can easily farm out Internet research to virtual assistants. Common requests include finding information on corporate websites, exploring new products and vetting potential employees or business contacts, says Sue Kramer Harrawood, president of Peace of Mind Virtual Assistance, an Orland Park, Ill., firm that provides companies with virtual assistants. Be sure to send clear instructions, along with user names and passwords so assistants can get access to specialty search tools or paid websites. Tristen O'Brien, an eBay marketing expert in Westfield, Indiana, asks his assistant to help him find blog topics, as well as occasionally proofread his blog on eBay selling. "She researches what is trending and reports back to me," O'Brien says.

Database entries: Whether it's a slew of new business cards picked up at a conference or updated information for existing contacts, keeping databases current is a suitable task for virtual assistants. Be specific about your needs and expectations, and make sure the virtual assistant has done this type of work before so there's less room for errors, Kramer Harrawood says. "Follow up is a huge thing for business owners. Sometimes clients will fax or scan business cards to us, and [virtual assistants] will plug them into the database."

Data presentations: Turning raw data into a clear PowerPoint presentation or summarizing research findings in a Word document can be a huge timesaver when prepping for meetings, says Rich Pearson, chief marketing officer at eLance.com, a jobs website for freelancers in Mountain View, Calif., who uses a virtual assistant himself. The data "comes back in a format I can share," he says.

Managing email: To keep you from wasting time in your email inbox, some virtual assistants will filter your most important emails and respond to the rest on your behalf, Colaiacovo says. Such email management is easy to do remotely, but you need to provide guidance on how to pick out key emails and ask the assistant to copy you before sending out any responses to reduce the risk of errors. 

Social tasks: Virtual assistants can be a good bet to handle tasks such as writing holiday cards or sending thank you notes, says Bisharat, who notes that social chores have become a very common assignment. Such tasks can become "all consuming" for business executives, she says, "but a good virtual assistant can take care of all of it." 

Travel Research: Virtual assistants are a great resource for finding hotels, booking airfares and mapping out trip itineraries both for business and pleasure, Pearson says. The assistants can take advantage of the growing number of travel research tools and review sites on the Web. They can also deal with the hassle of navigating time zones when booking or researching international travel options by phone.

  Scheduling: Because many scheduling tools are available online, virtual assistants are managing the calendars of many clients, says Kramer Harrawood. Tasks include dealing with meeting invitations from others, scheduling appointments with clients and helping to plan events. "It's about being comfortable and letting go of that calendar" to a non-staff person working remotely, Kramer Harrawood says.

Chasing business: Prioritizing potential business opportunities can be challenging, but virtual assistants can help with the process. When deciding what to sell on eBay, for example, O'Brien asks his virtual assistant to look around for products that can be profitable to resell. "I give them quite a few websites to visit, and they take it from there," he says. "They look for clearance items and other types of products."

Industry knowledge prep: With limited time to keep up with industry news, some small businesses have turned to virtual assistants to keep tabs on the most important happenings. Many executives then use the industry information to update their Twitter feed or bring up interesting developments in conversation with customers and prospects. This helps "executives appear to have timely news," Pearson says.

-Alina Dizik - Freelance Journalist @ Entrepreneur.com 

Govind Davis, who runs a business software firm in Cleveland, has never met his assistant Jackie—although they work closely together. All he’s seen of Jackie is a photo she posted with her online résumé and on Skype, which is almost their sole means of communication.

Jackie Cullen, whom Davis hired four months ago, is known as a virtual office assistant, an independent contractor who does secretarial work from her home in North Carolina. She works only when needed, usually about 30 hours per week, to book travel, schedule appointments, and do research. “Certainly, it takes a mental adjustment,” says Davis, chief executive of MCF Technology Solutions. “But Jackie, she’s turned out to be great, and I have no concern about paying her.”

Virtual assistants are a small but growing phenomenon at companies looking to minimize overhead. Because they are contractors, virtual assistants are paid only for hours that they actually work instead of a guaranteed salary for a 40-hour week. Not only do companies save on employee benefit costs, but there’s also no real estate or equipment to fund, no need to lease space for an extra desk or buy a computer.

Acquiring a virtual assistant, however, comes with additional peril. Can you trust someone you’ve never met to handle sensitive corporate information? And how will you know if they’re goofing off?

Virtual assistants are not new. Before the Internet era, they used faxes and telephones to keep in touch with their employers but remained a relative rarity. The term virtual assistant had yet to be coined. Today, they are far more common, according to Kathy Colaiacovo, marketing director for the International Virtual Assistants Association, a trade group that provides certification for its members. Exact numbers are impossible to come by, however, because there are no estimates about the size of the niche. The association, however, has around 700 members.

Companies have become more accepting of remote and mobile workers in recent years as online tools have made it easier to keep in touch with the home office and do clerical work from afar, Colaiacovo says. “When I started four and a half years ago, I had to explain a lot to people what a virtual assistant does,” she says. “I rarely have to do that anymore.”

Of all companies, small businesses are the most likely to hire virtual assistants, Colaiacovo says. A mom-and-pop operation does not necessarily need a full-time assistant, often having only enough work for just a few hours a week.

Companies also gain from the flexibility. Instead of being locked into paying for a set number of hours per week, a business owner can adjust according to the amount of work needed. As with many contractors, a virtual assistant’s hourly cost tends to be higher than that of a full-time employee. 

Colaiacovo recommends that the parties sign a contract that spells out what is expected. In many cases, employers pay a deposit up front—half the fee for a project, for example.

Even under the best of circumstances, virtual assistants aren’t for everyone. People who hire them must be willing to give up some control and be comfortable communicating online. “If they need that person there to touch the shoulder and say, ‘This is what I need done,’ it just doesn’t work,” Colaiacovo says.

Davis, the software CEO, says that a virtual assistant is a natural fit for his company, most of whose 45 employees work from home. In all, the business has six to eight virtual assistants, although some of their duties go beyond clerical work. Typically, Davis says he hires virtual assistants for a limited time or for a small project to see how they do. If they excel, he keeps them.

Jackie is the second virtual assistant to work directly for Davis. A previous assistant floundered, for which he takes some of the blame. “I just didn’t take too seriously that I had to vet her,” Davis says. “She was helpful on a few things, but she didn’t have the range of skills.”

Vetting a virtual assistant by checking references and online sites is obviously important. In the end, trust is crucial, particularly if you’re going to share account passwords, for example.

When seeking work, virtual assistants post their profiles on job sites, such as oDesk, which charges employers a 10 percent commission on top of what they pay their hires. Companies can also go through agencies that provide virtual assistants.

Some employers are inevitably concerned that a virtual assistant will charge for hours when they are actually watching television. Silicon Valley’s oDesk, for example, provides some assurances. When an assistant is logged into a job on their computer, an automated program takes six snapshots of the screen every hour. The employer can check those images remotely to see whether their assistant is fooling around on Facebook.

Jackie usually communicates with Davis through Skype’s instant messenger, as he does with most of his employees. They rarely talk on the telephone.

One of the few downsides of her being 500 miles away, Davis says, is that he has to mail her paperwork that piles up on his desk rather than just handing it to her. But the cost savings outweigh any negatives, he adds.

“You have to form some new brain circuits to get used to it,” says Davis. “But I don’t personally feel like I have any downside to it.”

-Verne Kopytoff  is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor in San Francisco.