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Best Virtual Assistant Countries For Business Process Outsourcing

 

Companies from all over the world are turning to virtual assistant services to ensure that they employ the perfect virtual assistant that suits their business requirements.

Small business start-ups need to hire the right virtual assistants as they don’t want to waste money when they delegate tasks to the wrong service provider.

When you hire a virtual assistant, you must research which country the person is from. People from different countries will have different skill sets when it comes to the outsourcing tasks your business requires.

And to make sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for, we’ve put together this guide

Importance Of Business Process Outsourcing

As a business owner, it will help you to use a virtual assistant service that has contacts around the world. You aim to hire the best virtual assistants, whether that be from a first-world country or a developing nation.

These workers are normally found in fast-growing urban population countries like The Philippines, China, Brazil, India, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Businesses are attracted to hiring VAs due to the money they can save due to there being very lenient restrictions on the amount you are expected to pay virtual staff.

A study carried out by Payscale, the aggregation salary site, found that, on average, the hourly rate for Filipino VA is roughly 177.35 Peso. This is around $5 Australian dollars an hour.

The working hours of a VA can be different depending on your business sector. However, VAs are often highly flexible, and industry stats suggest that your typical VA worker will work roughly a 20-hour week.

When Did Virtual Assistants Become Popular?

Hiring virtual assistants started to become popular in 1995 when we had dial-up internet services in our homes. This made it easier for businesses to hire a virtual assistant.

Anastacia Brice was the person who came up with the term Virtual Assistant in 1996. The American entrepreneur and business coach is seen as the main pioneer of the virtual assistance profession.

Where Brice started, others followed as many businesses soon saw the advantages of having a dedicated virtual assistant. Many companies turned to virtual assistant services to help them hire virtual assistants for their business needs from a growing global talent pool of offshore workers.

Many people were taking online classes to enable them to become virtual assistants, such was the growing demand for companies wanting personal assistant services.

Recently, studies show that people who work remotely are 13% more productive than those who are office-based. As VAs often work from the comfort of their own homes, they are often happier in their working environment.

A happy worker leads to becoming a more productive worker. This is because they are not distracted by other workers in the office, and their home working space may be quieter. Also, they don’t have to deal with the hassle of a daily commute to the office.

Often the travel time it takes a worker to get to the office is seen as the most stressful part of the working day. If a worker is stressed when they arrive at work, then they are less likely to have a productive working day.

Internet Enabled Demand

The year 2000 saw a boom in the advancement of the internet thanks to broadband which meant faster internet speeds. This was good news for companies and people who wanted to work remotely from the comfort of their own homes.

From 2000-2015 there was real growth in business owners hiring virtual assistants to carry out a wide range of tasks that would save their company time and money.

The virtual assistance industry helped companies worldwide find the right virtual assistant to deal with any number of different tasks, from a general virtual assistant to a personal assistant who is more skilled in a chosen field.

Companies could see after doing a cost-benefit analysis that they would save a lot of money by hiring a virtual assistant. These skilled professionals would help with scheduling appointments and help keep up with customer demand.

Over time the virtual assistance industry would grow to a point where companies would use outsourced services to help them hire someone to do their social media marketing or even hire an executive assistant.

The industry was seen as a good career path for those with a diverse skill set and not just for those who would provide the personal assistant services skills of a normal secretarial worker.

Thanks to increased broadband speeds, business owners were now confident to hire a virtual assistant to undertake work in areas such as software development, technical support, social media accounts, web development, and marketing strategies.

Growth Potential Through Virtual Assistants

Like with most things in the business world, the United States leads the world when it comes to anything to do with personal assistant services.

It all comes down to cost. Businesses see that hiring someone to carry out time-consuming tasks while paying them an average wage that is fair to them is a situation that suits both parties.

In 2015 Gallup conducted a survey that found that 37% of the workforce in America worked in the telecommunications sector.

In 2012-13 Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer introduced virtual workers into the world-renowned business. However, in China, it was already a thing to have the best virtual home-based workers working for your business. China (85%) led the way closely, followed by India (77%). The UK (71%) was next and then Brazil (61%).

Many businesses are catching on to the idea that VAs are often far more productive than those based in the office. According to a study, office-based workers are only fully productive for 2 hours 53 minutes of the working day.

When we say fully productive, we mean companies have to allow for coffee/tea breaks, toilet breaks, smoking breaks, and indeed a lunch break. All this wasted time is costing the company money.

When companies hire a VA because they pay per hour and not per week or month, it is more likely that the worker will carry out their tasks without having a coffee/tea break and lunch break because they know they are not being paid for this wasted time.

According to a report written for Business Wire, before the worldwide pandemic, it is thought that the virtual assistant market for remote workers is estimated to increase to a whopping $25.6 billion by 2025.

Global VA Opportunities

Thanks in part to the global pandemic, most businesses are on tighter budgets. With this in mind, it is sensible to start hiring remote workers from countries such as India and the Philippines as virtual assistants.

When it comes to providing outsourced services, the Philippines and India are regarded as the most cost-effective for businesses around the globe.

With a lower average salary in the Philippines, businesses are turning to them at a fast pace. The industry has seen a growth of 46% since 2006, and it is anticipated to grow by at least another 25% by 2022.

India is still seen as a world leader when it comes to outsourcing Information Technology (IT) work. You only have to look at their annual growth rate of over 50% to realise that India is still way ahead of the field in the IT sector.

Overall, as the outsourced work increased, the need for virtual assistants grew with it. It is estimated that one million Filipino virtual assistants workers and freelance workers are part of the ever-growing eight million workforce. This is according to Upwork.

Worldwide Opportunities

There are worldwide opportunities for companies of all sizes, thanks to advancements in technology. Businesses are no longer afraid to hire VAs from countries like the Philippines and the Indian outsourcing industry. This is due to their high levels of performance.

IT Outsourcing

As early as 2012, India has been seen as a go-to destination when hiring people to carry out virtual assistance work.

If you want to hire executive assistance in the field of IT, then India is the first place to source. Workers in this country are known to be highly skilled and capable when it comes to dealing with all your IT needs.

India has built their reputation as a world leader in IT services since the start of the 1990s. Worldwide outsourcing for IT from India started to take off when American businesses in Silicon Valley started using Indian remote workers in 1995.

It is not just India and the Philippines who are seen as good partners despite English not being their official language. Countries across Asia, such as China, Indonesia, and Malaysia, are also providing quality virtual assistant services thanks to their outstanding linguistic skills.

Thanks to emerging trends in worldwide business, it is easier for companies to reach out to prospective buyers due to having a virtual assistant who works in India, Singapore, the Philippines, or any other country.

Admin Aoutsourcing

It is true to say that some businesses still have outdated views and concerns when it comes to hiring a VA from another country. This attitude will only serve to hold your business back and may well see your company miss out on money-making chances in growing markets.

Cultural differences should not be viewed as a barrier when hiring a VA. If anything, it could be seen as a chance to learn about different cultures, which can only help to enhance your business and save your money in the long term.

Employing people from other countries can be seen as a daunting task. Such a thing doesn’t have to be viewed with trepidation. There are many advantages and opportunities to be gained by hiring people worldwide.

You will find that you may hire a person with a certain skill that you didn’t realise your business needed.

For example, the person you hire will no doubt be able to speak at least two languages to a very high standard.

This can only be seen as a major plus for your company as the language they speak may help you gain new business contacts in that country.

India is a highly populated country with a fast-growing business economy, so it may prove an advantage to have an Indian worker working for your company. The same can be said of other countries such as China, the Philippines, Brazil, and so on.

Why Outsource To The Philippines?

These are the main reasons so many companies hire VAs in the Philippines.

English Language

Businesses are often apprehensive about the language skills of remote workers from countries like the Philippines, India, China, and so on. While their concern is understandable, it is also unwarranted as English is taught in schools from a very young age in these countries.

For example, in the Philippines, Tagalog is the official national language, but a very high percentage of the population has a good grasp of English.

To back this up, a study carried out by Global English found that the Philippines ranked No.1 in the world in speaking Business English.

It is vital for the VA you hire to have outstanding English skills. This applies to any task they are asked to perform. It could be simple data entry tasks or more skilled tasks such as social media marketing in developing countries.

Small business owners, as well as global companies, are often more than willing to offer work to remote employees in countries like the Philippines and India because they are more than capable of doing the administrative tasks for less than the normal average salary.

When offering employee contracts to any worker, it is important that they fully understand what is required from them.

Overall Literacy

The Philippines is regarded as one of the best countries to hire a VA as a new team member. The main reason for this is that the country has a 96.2% literacy rate.

This makes them one of the lightest literacy rates in the world, with workers displaying an outstanding grasp of the English language.

All good businesses should be looking to reduce their costs while maintaining their high level of performance. This is why forward-thinking companies hire remote workers from developing parts of the world because it proves cost-effective.

They are often happy to save on costly office space, which would be needed if they employed an office-based full-time worker.

With the money your business saves on office space and reduced wages a virtual assistant worker from another country will command, it allows them to use that saved money in other areas of the business to seek new clients.

Welcoming Culture

Hiring a Filipino virtual assistant does not just save money for your business by outsourcing time-heavy tasks from your in-office staff; it also helps to enrich your company in other ways.

For example, the Philippines has been colonised by Japan, America, and Spain over the years, and as a direct result of this, they have taken on many of these traditions and practices.

This means that, in general terms, Filipino workers will fit in well with your company as their politeness will transfer to all nationalities.

Also, when we are talking about the culture of your company and the standards you set within your company, the remote worker you hire as your data entry VA must stick to your standards.

For example, they must be able to get on with everyone within your business and the clients they may be dealing with. The values they hold as people will help you implement good values and standards for your business.

With all this in mind, hiring someone from the Philippines should cause you no issues when it comes to dealing with people; their general and business culture is built on the utmost respect.

Contact Us Today

Hiring someone from the Philippines as a virtual assistant to deal with any task your business may need should be viewed as a massive benefit to your company.

You could outsource tasks or the following services such as social media management, cold calling, data entry, event management, inventory management, web design, or your editorial calendar.

As discussed above, we could help you find a VA worker from a popular outsourcing destination who will be the perfect fit for your company. We are confident that we can find the ideal virtual assistant for your outsourced services needs.

Call us today to get started on hiring the next member of your team. You can contact us on 1300 727 147.

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