Every small business is in the same boat. They need more help, but can’t find good people. Hiring has become a nightmare. Even if you post an ad and get someone quickly, it’s no longer guaranteed that they’ll fill your role. What’s even worse? What used to be a two-week hiring process has turned into three-month glacial efforts and hiring someone still gets you a sub-par worker who isn’t trained.
It’s not even about hiring some bodies anymore—it’s about finding people who actually know what they’re doing, show up on time, and who don’t require three months of training just to get to a productive pace.
What’s wrong with the hiring process
The numbers are staggering. The average cost to hire someone now exceeds $4,000 (not including training time, equipment, and losses until they’re up to speed!). That’s a big investment for small business owners with little payoff.
In addition, the turnover rates are staggering. Anyone in administration and supportive roles has more than 50% turnover in many industries. This means the above investment is incurred over and over again.
Small business owners are spending their time interviewing and training but not actually running their businesses. This is especially problematic in specialized roles, which require industry knowledge.
Where virtual options succeed
This is where savvy business owners step in and get creative with staffing solutions. While finding the perfect candidate to fill positions is difficult and daunting, virtual support teams exist with various virtual assistants who are already trained and equipped to help.
When a business decides to hire a dental virtual assistant or other specialized virtual assistance, they know immediately they’ll get someone equipped to help—they won’t have to spend time training this person or wondering if they know what to do. They’ll be good to go from minute one.
Virtual assistants aren’t merely answering the phone anymore. They’re scheduling complex appointments, handling customer service inquiries, processing orders, managing social media, and handling bookkeeping responsibilities. The key is that they come with those developed skills pre-existing.
How virtual teams fill the skills gap
One of the most complicated areas of hiring is attempting to find someone who has the skills necessary for your role. As a small business, you might need customer service abilities, administrative savvy, general social media help, as well as basic bookkeeping and organizational skills.
It’s rare to find one person who can fulfill all these roles masterfully; instead, it’s best to find help with specific roles and then hope they can work together well.
By hiring virtual support teams, there are specialists for various functions who work collaboratively on your behalf. Need customer service-focused help? There’s a virtual assistant for that. Need bookkeeping assistance? Someone knows QuickBooks inside and out.
The training aspect isn’t an issue because these professionals are already trained. They already understand the software and the systems needed because they’ve assisted similar businesses before.
Flexibility that small businesses need
Once someone is hired traditionally, it’s a fixed cost of employment regardless of what type of work must be done. A full-time position means pay for a full-time position even if business growth is not suitable enough to warrant full-time efforts.
Virtual support means additional hours can be allotted based on the demand; when busy seasons occur, more hours can be added without repercussion for small-business cash flow; when things slow down, adjustments can be made.
In addition, the flexibility extends to the type of work; there might be seasons where additional customer service support is required or even more administrative help needed in another season such as tax season.
The benefits of the numbers do not make sense of hiring through traditional staffing means.
Most small businesses can afford virtual support now that payroll is no longer a fixed cost as a full-time salary plus benefits, payroll taxes, and other overhead costs mean hours worked mean productive hours; most businesses find that for every 40 hours worked by traditional employees, they find 60% of that work output in virtual hours.
But more importantly, avoided costs remain—no recruitment efforts through training time, no overhead management, no replacement turnover—and it’s all through the company that’s providing the virtual assistance.
Even more so, opportunity costs come into play because business owners can regain their time rather than handle HR problems since they have no employees; instead of onboarding new teams constantly or letting go of those who fall flat at certain expectations based on industry standards, owners have the tools they need with virtual support professionals are held responsible for getting the job done.
Quality assurance and communication standards
The number one concern most business owners have with remote assistance is quality assurance—will work get done? The answer lies in what works for quality assurance through successful remote providers—data needs to be provided through project management systems that show accountability—whether it’s clocking in or turning over information—virtual teams often have more accountability based on results than showing up for an 8-hour shift.
Tools for communication provide adequate insight into what’s being worked on and when. Often this gives better context of productivity than having the business owner in-house all day seeing whether they’re busy or distracted by office breaks/lunches.
Looking for long-term solutions
It’s not only that businesses can have their needs met in the short term; instead, once these operations are implemented, they become long-term solutions.
Those businesses that make the transition early will find themselves with a competitive advantage; without limits based on local talent pools and without associated costs that limit what they can provide for their customers or how much time they spend on HR issues instead of scaling growth for their business success, it no longer makes sense for small businesses to ponder what’s next with staffing solutions—they need to act quickly first to meet their needs now but also for the long run.
Small businesses—and those working in them—will quickly realize it’s not whether virtual assistants make sense; instead, it’s how quickly these solutions can help them realize immediate staffing needs met while setting them up for their long-term success.