Begin your transition and work with a Virtual Assistant (VA). Maybe you have never worked with an Assistant before and in which case you are probably asking where do you begin and how do you make the transition? An experienced VA should take the lead for you, but here are three simple steps for you to take at the beginning.

1. Sharing and access of information

Allow your VA to ‘shadow and share’ your inbox, calendar and any to do lists. No action is taken at this stage it’s purely an insight into the day to day running of your business and how you work. You may already know the tasks you want to handover, but if not, your VA can make recommendations based on what they see.

Feeling reluctant to share information and resources at the start? Put in place NDA’s and a Confidentiality Agreement where appropriate but gradual access to information builds understanding and importantly trust.

A valuable sharing platform for private and confidential access is LastPass. This allows your VA access to webpages, accounts and any other web-based platforms which you use to carry out work, BUT, they do not need to know your access details. That’s not all you can share bank cards, passports, loyalty cards, anything which requires them to act on your behalf i.e. booking travel, updating social media or solving account issues.
This now creates your handover ‘Bible’ containing everything your VA needs to efficiently work on your behalf. This is the kind of preparation which will pay for itself repeatedly, whether it be if you change assistant, or bring a new person to the team. Everything from how you interact with social media, email correspondence and who is important to you can be learnt during this introduction. This is your VAs own point of reference but can be shared and updated between you. It will accomplish tasks quicker and eliminate a lot of initial back and forth. Equip your VA with as much knowledge as possible from the start. You can add to this when you feel comfortable to divulge more information.

2. Delegating

Offload to do lists, thoughts and mundane or complex tasks via a shared centralised to do list. This can be as simple or as detailed as you like depending on the abilities of your share point.

For a comprehensive tracking of projects and tasks, share information via desktop and mobile apps i.e. Google Calendar, Google Keep, Trello. Trello is a favourite of mine and a great way of keeping everything in one place. Time lines, uploads, group chat, progress updates, questions, task lists and feedback and a lot more all there to hand.

For those less inclined with apps simply email. Shoot across all your woes with plenty of detail for your VA to pick up and crack on with. Even though you are virtual keep your relationship authentic with speaking over the phone, via Skype and even meeting in person if you can. Sometimes the ‘old fashioned’ ways of communication are the best, which leads us to my last point.

3. Communication

Keep in touch on a regular basis, over the phone/ Skype or face to face catch up and at least once a week. A savvy VA will keep an agenda on what needs to be discussed to avoid digressing and more time than it needs. This catch up should also include feedback from you. Depending how frequent you would like to keep in touch, your VA can send updates i.e. end of each day or few times a week, just a progress email and it may prompt something from you, but ideally this is just an FYI, back and forth email should be kept minimum and questions saved for your phone call. We’re looking to save your time not add to it, but remember, for everything worth pursuing an initial investment in time pays off in the long term.

It’s about building trust and understanding expectations. For more information see also my infographic ‘How to transition and delegate work to a VA’.