Outsourcing is not just as simple as picking a talent from the other side of the world. You have to thoroughly screen your candidates, find the best match for your business and have a clear on-boarding process.

What most people don’t realize is that the process won’t end with on-boarding – you will also have to train them as well! But no worries, we have prepared 3 tips below that will help do that.

Not having a clear definition of KPIs

Since you do not have physical guidance over your virtual assistants, you cannot easily see how well they are performing. Are they focused on their jobs? Are they spending most of their time on Facebook instead of keeping track of their tasks? Are they doing other side jobs while on your paid hours?

If you combine this with an unclear definition of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), then it will be even harder for you to know if outsourcing is working for your business or not!

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are a clear set of guidelines or checklists indicating the standards that your talents need to meet. For example, if your VA is handling your social media accounts, then some of the things that need to be measured in your KPI are post engagements, response time, number of posts, and overall quality of work.

These expectations should be clear to your VA, and they should know that they are being evaluated for these factors. You should also have a set date for evaluation. Try measuring it fortnightly in the beginning, just to see how well they are integrating with your processes. If everything is working out alright, you can move to monthly or quarterly evaluations.

Believing that an outsourced team comes fully prepared

One of the major complaints I receive from friends who outsource is their VAs do not know how to do their tasks. Upon further investigation, I realized that the problem is not because they do not know how to do it, they just do not know the exact way of how you want it to be done.

Virtual Assistants are highly skilled people, but they are not mind readers! If you prefer to do a task in a certain flow, you will have to tell them. These people are professionals who have also worked for various employees, so they are bound to have their own different processes for things. If you have a step-by-step procedure that you want to be maintained, you have to tell them the steps!

Letting YouTube do all the training

In the rare times that you want to use a platform that your VA is not familiar with, you will also have to train them in order for them to acquire the skill. Do not leave it to them to discover the platform or binge watch YouTube tutorials. It is not half as effective, and you will only be wasting your purchased hours. Take time to show them how to operate the platform or how you want them to use it.

If you do not want to engage your VAs in long sessions of video chat training then you can simply record a video of your instructions. It is actually better this way since they can always come back to your video as a reference.

Working with a virtual team is no easy feat. Handling talents from the other side of the world can sometimes be trickier than managing an in-house workforce. Improve your outsourcing experience by following the tips above!