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Businesses hire VAs (or any type of employee, for that matter) with one main goal in mind: to get a return on their investment.  

They have too much work to do and need to spread it around, so they bring in a VA to offload some of their tasks. This can be a savvy move that scales your workforce without incurring the high costs of hiring a permanent employee — but are the expected savings always worth it? How do you know if hiring a VA makes good business sense? 

It all comes down to Return on investment (ROI). Here’s how to measure ROI when hiring VAs. 

Calculate Your Baseline 

First things first: Does it make financial sense to bring a VA on board?  Ultimately, you want your VA to help you do better than how you’re already doing: more website traffic, more social ad clicks, more conversions, more emails or phone calls, whatever you decide to outsource. 

Before you hire, take stock of your current performance without a VA. For example, if your VA will be helping with digital marketing, look at your website traffic, rankings, cost per acquisition, and other metrics so you can compare the before and after picture. 

Then figure out what needs to be delegated and which tasks bring the most value to your business. Many businesses follow the Pareto Principle here, outsourcing the 20% of tasks that give you 80% of your results. This allows the VA to maximize their contributions to your company instead of handling “busy work.” 

Consider Your Time 

Think about how you’re currently handling the tasks that need to be delegated. Are your employees spending too little time on high-value tasks because there are too many other things that need to be done? Or, are you a team-of-one who doesn’t have enough hours in the day? Most business owners spend 40% of their working hours on tasks that don’t generate income. 

Freeing up some hours can help you spend your time more effectively. For example, if you value your time at $50 an hour and hiring a VA will free up 6 hours of your time per week, then a VA would certainly be worth it to you, right? You’re spending $300 a week doing the same tasks that a VA might handle for $90 (at $15 per hour) – a potential ROI of $210! 

Compare the Cost of Hiring a VA vs a Regular Employee 

When you need to hire someone, you have a choice of outsourcing or creating an internal position. The hourly rate is a big part of this, but the costs don’t end there. If you hire an employee, you’re also paying for benefits, equipment, workspace, employment taxes, and myriad other costs. This isn’t the case with a VA, who usually works as a contractor for a flat or hourly rate. 

Review Performance 

Measuring VA ROI isn’t a one-and-done deal. Once you bring a VA on board, you also need to look at how their ROI aligns with your initial calculations. For example, if you hire a virtual assistant to help with social media posting, you could look at how much traffic their posts are bringing in, whether you’re getting more conversions, audience growth and engagement, etc.  

 This is a big step for some businesses because it forces you to think about what tasks and results are really worth. 

While there is no magic number for Return on investment that works for every business, it can help you think about the outcomes you expect when hiring a VA. To get started, reach out today.