We all look forward to our annual holiday (or holidays if you are lucky enough to be able to take more than one). For many of us it’s what drives us forward and keeps us working. Our goals that we visualise, our motivation of taking a trip to a beautiful location, seeing things we don’t see every day on our home turf, and if you live in the UK, like me, you enjoy a little bit of reliable sunshine elsewhere. Working with a Virtual Assistant UK may be the answer to your prayers.
As a business owner however, there are extra things to think about if you are going to take time away from the office: your very own VAcation team (Virtual Assistant UK).
When you work as an employee and have a team surrounding you and managers to take care of the work load, you can pretty much leave your work environment on the day you intend to commence your annual leave, and have reassurance that all things are taken care of in your absence.
I have news! This can work in the same way if you run your own business too. You can indeed walk away from your office to begin your holiday and go and enjoy some quality relaxation, adventure or whatever you enjoy doing, without stressing too much about how things will run while you are away.
The answer … surround yourself with YOUR VAcation team – a Virtual Assistant UK.
All this takes is a little careful planning for the first occasion, and then when you’ve done it once and know it works you will feel able to take yourself away from work and not worry about your business on more than one occasion.
Here are three tips on creating that dream vacation team (who not only can support you during your break, but also year round if required)
- Get to know your support member(s). Turn to a friendly Virtual Assistant for a discovery call, which many offer free of charge and talk through with them the type of support that would really help you during your time away. He or she may also come up with further suggestions that you may not have already thought of. After all, this is exactly what they are there for.
- Have systems and processes in place. Do you keep your procedures documented? If not, then now is possibly the best time to review this and get a bit of a ‘business manual’ in place. This makes it easy for tasks to be performed as you would perform them yourself and is a very useful resource for anyone providing you with support in your absence. Don’t panic if you don’t know where to start. Once again a Virtual Assistant can help you to create this and if in the future you look to take on a permanent member of staff, you already have your processes documented which makes training a whole lot easier.
- Speak to others who have turned to a VA for support. I’m almost 100% certain that they will tell you it was the best thing they ever did and will be able to explain exactly what the value of a VA did for them.
What would be the three tasks on your list that you know straight away could be taken care of by your support member during your time away? Write them down. Add more if you can think of them, you will soon see how quickly that list grows.
You have worked so hard year round to reward yourself with a blissful vacation. Make sure you do everything possible to enable you to switch off, unwind and feel refreshed for your return to a smooth running office.
Employing staff is a whole new ball game with its own set of rules. Working with a VA is an option that a great many business people are turning to. Check out my book on How to Hire a Virtual Assistant. Available on Amazon by clicking here.
Connect with Michelle on other platforms too: Learn how you can work with Virtual Hand; how your business can grow and how you can communicate better with your audience.
