It is true that remote employees or virtual assistants (VAs) are considerably more productive and focused on meeting their respective goals than their in-house counterparts. But, even virtual assistants might experience work stress at one point in time and will feel the burnout effect.
Upon availing of the virtual assistant services, you can be sure of the fact these professionals don’t have to handle the daily commutes and can attain an optimal work-life balance. But, some of the jobs or tasks that these VAs deal with do demand prolonged working hours and a full day’s worth of sitting in front of the computer screen.
Remote employees are often handed out tasks that seem too monotonous or continue for a long time. And in some cases, they also take up multiple jobs from diverse clients, which drains them out. So, to ensure your virtual assistants do not experience burnout, this article gives you certain crucial tips to help you in ensuring that.
What are the Tips to Avoid Burnout Situations for Virtual Assistants?
Here are certain burnout prevention tips that every employer must keep in mind while hiring remote professionals from top virtual assistant companies in USA:
1. Set the Right Boundaries
The major reason for burnout of virtual assistants is when you think your remote employees will be available for you at all times. When people tend to work from home, you can expect they are leveraging the flexibility in working hours. But you must still decide on specific times for contacting the VA.
For that, you must prepare a routine for every day to get an update on your specific work from the VA and maintain it. A clear schedule will help reduce the surprising stress or sudden tasks that come up due to unplanned communications or interactions throughout the day. Such a schedule would also help strengthen the bond between a VA and an employer.
2. Avoid Giving them Too Much Work
One of the biggest factors that contribute to your VA’s burnout is too much work pressure. When you assign too much work to the VAs, they will find it exhausting, and the quality of the output will eventually deteriorate unintentionally. Therefore, you must consider setting an acceptable quota of work for the virtual assistants.
Upon hiring the VA, you must start slow with an average volume of specific tasks, to see the quality of delivery. Once you know the work is meeting your standards, try to find an ideal balance between the right amount of work assignments and quality delivery of the VAs. This way, your productivity will be ensured, while the virtual assistant won’t burnout.
3. Maintain an Open Communication Environment
Irrespective of whether you are hiring Shopify, BigCommerce, or Adobe Commerce store management services, eCommerce operations might be tiresome at one point in time due to an increase in order volumes or consistent growth demands of the business. There will be some challenges that the VAs will experience in the quest to fulfill the work demands.
Thus, you must make a work environment where the VAs can feel as part of your team, and take part in healthy communications to solve the challenges. The best way you can do this is by sending out some anonymous surveys to determine any work process challenges that the VAs are facing. Find the solution to those challenges and reduce the burnout effect.
4. Keep the VAs Motivated
If you hand out only a single type of job or task to your VA forever, they will run out of patience and interest to work on it. This is one of the most common burnout reasons for virtual assistants who offer Magento, BigCommerce, or Shopify product store management services.
The solution is quite straightforward: don’t let your team of VAs handle just one type of assignment. It is better to switch things up for them, to let them overcome any kind of boredom. Next, you must also motivate your VAs to adopt the career growth opportunities that you extend for them.
5. Introduce a Reward System
Just like you might have an internal rewarding policy for the in-house employees, the same should be for the VAs as well. Even though they are third-party outsourced assistants, they like to be praised for the quality of work and performance they deliver. So, if you realize your VAs are proficiently handling your given duties and bringing productivity to your business, do give them appreciation.
For this, you can introduce a reward system for the VAs working with you and let them set their own performance targets. Rewards can be anything, like gift vouchers, a paid day off, or anything else that you can think of.
6. Prioritize the Wellness of the VAs
You must make efforts to prioritize the wellness aspects for your VAs offering you Magento, Shopify, or BigCommerce product store management services. Following that, you must take necessary actions for promoting or monitoring it, without stepping out of boundaries.
You can plan on organizing certain activities where the team can play virtual games or get into a healthy discussion. Regular interactions among the team will enable the VAs to feel more involved in the business operations than usual. This would encourage them to work with a fresh and energized mind.
7. Encourage them to Take Frequent Breaks
At times, the work operations in a business might demand the VAs to put in more effort than usual. On occasional terms, even the VAs understand the necessity of work and try to give their best. But it is upon you to connect with them and let them take some frequent breaks in between to avoid straining their mind and body.
In most cases, the VAs will get into a very deep focus and might just forget to take a break. Therefore, it is your responsibility to remind your VAs about keeping aside work for a while and taking enough rest to recharge themselves.
Bottom Line
The exhaustion in the life of VAs is real! It is true that professionals find the role a bit flexible in terms of attaining work-life balance, but as the pressure increases, things start to fall apart. Your remote employees will start to experience the burnout and that might drop the productivity.
Therefore, before you turn up to hiring virtual assistant services, you must make the professionals feel like you genuinely think about them. This way, you will be able to build a healthy work relationship.
