Virtual Assistants Provide Alternative to Temporary Staffing Services. Richmond, Ontario company provides “virtual” administrative assistance from home office.
RICHMOND, ONTARIO -- More companies and professionals are joining a growing trend of using the services of Virtual Assistants (VAÂ’s), positions traditionally filled by temporary employees from agencies, to help ease workloads and to replace absent employees.
(PRWEB) June 5, 2003
April Boomer, 31, a Realtor Marketing Specialist and Virtual Assistant, founded ABVA Outsourcing Solutions in her Richmond, Ontario home. After significant research online, discovered this virtually untapped industry, and opened her “cyberspace” doors over 2 years ago.
“An industry that was once known as homebased Secretarial Services has evolved with the changing technology and has given Virtual Assistant’s the ability to provide services from administrative assistance, bookkeeping, and payroll to marketing, website design, desktop publishing and much more, to businesses located next door or around the world”, says Boomer. “Virtual Assistant’s can do basically anything an in-house administrative assistant can do, even answer your calls”.
Unlike staffing agencies, who send temps to work on-location for a certain period of time, BoomerÂ’s firm provides support from her home office either on an ongoing or contractual basis. Virtual Assistants are available for their clients each and every time which eliminates the need for retraining a new temp. When you use the same VA each time, she/he gets to know what you need done. ItÂ’s like having your own personal on-call temp.
Ms. Boomer says hiring virtual assistants over temporary workers helps her clients because she ensures the client is happy with the quality of work. "A temp just comes there to do a job. I'm interested in the overall success and health of all of my clients’ businesses. I feel that running my own business has given me an insight that just cannot be found in a temporary worker. I know the stress business owners face and do whatever I can to ease that stress.”
However, there are still many companies that want their admin staff where they can see them. That is fine too. “If you need to supervise in an “over-the-shoulder” way or are of a controlling mindset, Virtual Assistants are probably not for you”, Boomer says.
John Revitte, a Professor of Labor Relations at Michigan State University states that, “To labour activists, the use of temporary workers is a way for companies to avoid paying worker benefits. Virtual assistance is in the same category”. But Ms. Boomer disagrees completely. “Virtual Assistants are businesses, entrepreneurs. Self Employed people do not get benefits, nor do they expect them. Many VA’s arrange their own benefits with insurance companies. Virtual Assistants are just like any other business or profession, we file our business taxes and GST remittances the same way. We are simply filling a need by providing a service.”
Ms. Boomer’s clients are mainly comprised of Realtors and small businesses throughout North America for whom she handles everything from the basic administrative to the more in-depth tasks such as creating Virtual Tours, Web Commercials, designing all marketing material, and creating and implementing marketing plans and strategies, to name just a few. “It’s interesting. I do a lot of real estate market research and analysis for areas throughout the US, all from my home office in small-town Richmond. If someone had of told me even 10 years ago that this was what I’d be doing today, I’d have laughed. Technology has made, almost anything possible…Who knows, maybe someday soon I’ll be able to make coffee for a client in Kansas from my office here.”, muses Boomer.
Ms. Boomer boasts many accomplishments such as Founding CanadaÂ’s first Association for Virtual Assistants, CVA Success, co-founding CanadaÂ’s first Virtual Assistant certifications, and is the International Chapter Coordinator of work-the-web. com. April can be reached via email at aboomer@abva. ca, by phone at (613) 838-4664, or on the web at www. abva. ca.
