Small Business Owners often find themselves in a fix when the majority of their in-house staffs is concentrating on the current project(s) at hand. The company’s administrative, accounting, and other important tasks take a backseat as the project progress. Finally, when the staff has successfully completed the client’s project, they come face-to-face with the humongous backlog with the in-house tasks. This is a vicious cycle, and if not handled effectively, this could lead to some major catastrophe. As a business owner, your client’s project should be your prime priority. But, accumulation of in-house tasks in no-longer inevitable. A little forethought and some preparation should give you an added edge when handling your in-house tasks while working on your client’s project.
Now, it is the time to give some serious thought to delegating those little tasks that accumulate over time.
- Use spreadsheet and allocate new sheets for each department, such as Accounts, HR, Technical, PR, etc.
- Share this spreadsheet with the rest of the team, and request the departments to list their respective tasks that are held back while concentrating on the clients projects.
- This allows a consolidated list without having to wait for individual confirmation. Further, this also prevents creating multiple versions of the same document.
- Repetitive Tasks :- Identify time consuming repetitive tasks in your business and send out a memo to the team to list their tasks that which are normally stalled while working on a client’s project.
- One-Time tasks :- These tasks could be a one-time-affair, but nevertheless time consuming and important as an in-house practice. This could be a one-time activity such as, software installation, web-research aiming at a niche product/audience to boost your business, etc.
- Timeline :-It is critical for every business to operate and function with respect to a preset timeline. This allows one to stay ahead of the competition and at the same time deliver results with maximum competence, which is a crucial element in maintaining a good business relationship with the client. So, be sure to make a note of timeline within which the listed tasks need to be updated/completed. This will give you a projection along the timeline, and speed up negotiations with a virtual assistant for the allotted number of hours.
- Locate a VA :-You can choose to post your requirements at jobseeker’s sites and painstakingly scrutinize every applicant, but isn’t the idea is to reduce your load ?
- Resourceful networking:-.You can either locate VAs with relevant skills individually, or get into resourceful networking that allows you to access a pool of VAs with varied skill-sets and expertise. A handpicked team of virtual professionals will be commissioned for you. There will be a coordinator who will oversee the work for you and provide regular updates. As your staff work towards the client’s projects, the coordinator will make sure that your in-house tasks proceed parallely, ensuring that there is no backlog for you.