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Don't Think You Can Afford A Virtual Assistant? Think Again!

I believe there are two types of employees, 1) those who come to work in order to receive a paycheck and 2) those who come to work to make a difference and contribute to the organization. What kind of employee is Susie in the example below? Does the example sound familiar?

Susie arrives to work at 8:00 am, puts her purse in her desk, goes to the ladies room to freshen up, gets a cup of coffee while she chats with other employees who are also grabbing a cup, goes back to her desk and gets settled in for the day, turns on her computer, checks her e-mail (and quite possibly her personal e-mail as well), checks her voicemail, then continues to work on whatever it was she was working on when she left the office the day before. It is now 9:00 am. Later, Susie goes to lunch from Noon - 1:15 (the service took forever she explains) takes a couple of breaks throughout the day, makes a couple of personal phone calls, searches the internet for her upcoming vacation, and chats with other employees at various times in the day. At about 4:45, Susie is anticipating 5 o'clock so she begins to shut down her computer, goes to the ladies room to freshen up, begins to collect her belongings and is walking out the door at exactly 5:00 pm. all the while her desk is unorganized and covered with incomplete tasks, including those that need to be finished for an important meeting later this week. Susie may have contributed less than 6 hours in an 8 hour work day. That calculates to 30 hours a week or 1,560 hours per year of productive time...out of 2,080 hours that you are paying her.

Now the above example may be a little exaggerated, but not by much and some employees are even worse...I have witnessed it myself. But how much are you really paying Susie? At $14.75 per hour, her base annual salary is $30,680, but of course that doesn't include her two weeks vacation, six paid holidays, sick or personal days. That adds at least $2,500 or more. And of course then there are the taxes (federal, state, local, social security, medicare, unemployment, etc.) which adds $3,000 or more depending on your location. Benefits (medical, dental, etc.) will increase the cost approximately $4,500 more which brings you to $40,680 and that doesn't even include potential bonuses, space and equipment for the office or the cost of advertising the position, training the employee, etc.

After reading the example to the left, I would like to give you a scenario of hiring Signature Worx as your virtual assistant.

You retain 40 hours a month with Signature Worx to handle your desktop publishing needs. At $32 per hour (because you get a discount on monthly retainers) multiplied by 40 hours gives you a total of $1280 per month. Multiply that by 12 months and you've paid $15,360 + any materials/supplies. Compare this to the $40,680+ that you are paying a full-time employee and you've saved $25,320. And you didn't pay for any down time, sick time, vacation or unproductive hours. In addition to the cost savings, you get a seasoned assistant getting your work done without any hassles.

We only work when you need us, whether it is 5 hours or 40 hours per month.