Virtual assistants assist you in performing all back-office operations to streamline processing. Hiring one for your business ensures productivity and overall efficiency.

Even after knowing all the benefits of having a virtual assistant, every business owner raises the question, “Are virtual assistants safe?”

This blog will help you understand the factors that need to be considered before hiring a virtual assistant and provide tips for maintaining security with a VA to create a safe environment for your business operations.

Factors to Consider Before Hiring Virtual Assistant?

We are sharing some factors you should consider before hiring for you. Let’s understand them one by one:

Analyze Your Roles and Responsibilities

First, you must write down your responsibilities and roles to understand the tasks you want a virtual assistant to manage.

This will help you create a list of which tasks you don’t need to spend time on further, and based on the list, it will be easy to choose the VA according to the expertise for the specific tasks.

Consider Flexibility and Time-Zone

Virtual assistants work remotely from different geographic locations. It would be ideal to have a mutual understanding of timing and flexibility before hiring a VA.

One question you should ask the VA before hiring is whether they will be open to working at any time of day. This will help you avoid future work delays due to time differences.

Acknowledge the Time-period

Determining whether you are hiring for a short term or a long term will help you decide on various factors.

Considering the contract period before hiring a VA will help you set your budget accordingly and will help you classify and prioritize the tasks that need to be handled by a skilled candidate.

Test Trial for Accuracy

Some virtual assistants are open to providing a post-hiring test trial after the interview to mutually understand the workflows, services, and coordination. It will be worthwhile to consider a test trial before making any contract.

3 Tips to Maintain Security with VAs

It is clear that when you hire a virtual assistant, you have to give them a lot of credentials and access to ensure efficient work.

But it’s really hard to trust someone you’ve never met. Building trust for a new person with a completely different geographic location is not part of human nature.

Here we’re sharing three tips for maintaining high security with the VA and ensuring its benefits to your business. Let’s check them out:

Access to the accounts

Providing access to the accounts will make the VA available to conduct operations without sharing the passwords of your personal and business accounts.

It would be ideal not to give them access to the administration level (e.g., Gmail, Facebook, Mail Chimp, etc.) in the initial stage. Do not provide higher access to the administration until mutual understanding and a relationship are developed.

You can use LastPass, Dropbox, GoogleSuite, Microsoft Office 365, and more to access accounts, folders, files, documents, and spreadsheets without sharing the passwords and keeping good track of them.

Documentation

Documentation is a major part of ensuring safety with the VA. It will be easier to maintain security by getting signed documents with work policies and mutual agreements related to disputes.

Suppose a VA violates any policy, disputes, or initiates a security breach. In that case, the signed document will help to legally take action against it and receive compensation for the actions.

You should do signing contracts, non-disclosure agreements, and other necessary documents under the supervision of an attorney to ensure no legal loopholes.

Multi-factor Authentication

Adding multi-factor authentication to your accounts will help you prevent unauthorized users from accessing your accounts. You can easily track where the login has been initiated.

Multi-factor authentication will also protect your account from hackers. If you feel the login was not legitimate, In that case, you can easily block your account before any damage happens to it.

Conclusion: Hire Virtual Assistants from a Reliable Company

We hope you have understood the factors to consider before hiring a virtual assistant and the tips to ensure security while getting associated with them.

To make the process less complicated and burden-free, you must hire the VA from a reliable company.

FBSPL provides outsourced virtual assistant services to provide your organization the ability to scale business with VAs without having to onboard new employees.