This post is for prospective clients interested in hiring Virtual Assistants.
I don’t know where this disconnect is coming from, but I have to have a little plain-speaking talk with some of you. This is an area of growing concern, and for your sake–and our sanity–I need to edamacate you on the topic of hiring contractors.
Contractors, such as Virtual Assistants, are not your employees.
They are independent professionals, just like yourself, who run their own businesses. They have their own policies, procedures, standards and schedules. For most Virtual Assistants, it is their pleasure to share this information with you during a consultation.
With an independent contractor such as a Virtual Assistant, you get lots of advantages, some of which include:
- You don’t pay employee-related taxes
- You don’t pay for office equipment and business expenses
- You don’t have to worry about training, administration, supervision and management
- You have great flexibility instilled in your business
- There is greater over-all cost effectiveness and savings
- You can get a greater degree of talent and skill than you might ever be able to afford in an employee
I could list a ton more advantages and benefits with hiring independent contractors, but I think you get the idea.
You do need to understand one thing, however–hiring an independent contractor is not a way to get an employee without having to follow the law.
- When you hire an independent contractor, you don’t get to tell us what you’ll pay–we charge our own professional rates based on business economics and what will sustain our businesses profitably. You have only to decide that the value is there for you or not.
- You don’t get to tell us how to do the work that will be performed or what equipment we use. You only have a say in telling us what you want accomplished or the results you want achieved.
- We don’t "report" to you so we will not be filling out time reports or any other kinds of "reports" for that matter, nor attending employee meetings (virtual or otherwise). We perform work from our own facilities.
- You don’t get to tell us when the work will be done or what hours you expect us to be available. We manage our own time and work according to our own business schedule. Our relationship is one of business and customer, and our only concern, and obligation, to you is that we accomplish the work we’ve been engaged, and have agreed, to perform.
If you want or need someone who is solely dedicated to your business only, who you can supervise and manage, and who you can pay employee wages to, then you need an employee or a telecommuter (a telecommuter is someone who fits the legal definition of an employee but works from home).
That also means you need to follow employment laws, which means deducting taxes and paying your share as an employer, as well as paying for the legally-defined employee’s equipment and expenses.
Keep in mind that just because you both sign an independent contractor agreement, you are not protected from liability if the relationship doesn’t meet IRS or FLSA rules that determine whether an independent contractor is really an employee. The laws don’t uphold illegal agreements, and if the IRS determines this is the case, it is you who will be paying penalties and back taxes on those "independent contractors," not to mention any other benefits and reimbursements they would have received as an employee in your company.
And look, since I’m speaking plainly, I realize that it hurts to part with money and paying taxes is painful. But we’re in the same boat. We independent contractors have businesses to run just like you. We can’t work for peanuts, and we have to ensure our profitability so we can stay in business and continue to give great service to clients. It’s a two-way street, and business economics applies to both parties.
And frankly, if someone isn’t just innocently unknowing about these things, and is really intentionally looking to cheat Uncle Sam (and in the process, the employee "contractor"), my first thought is what else are they going to be shady and unethical about? I don’t want anything to do with anyone like that.
So do us and yourself a favor. Please treat us with the same demeanor and professional respect as you would expect to be treated yourself as a business owner. Keep in mind the dos and don’ts I’ve listed above, and you’ll very happily find yourself in a great business relationship with an independent Virtual Assistant contractor who can give your business great skill, great value, great flexibility and help it grow beyond what you could ever accomplish all by yourself.
Thanks for commenting. Yeah, the virtual assistant term is really completely idiotic to...
2 Comments
Hi Danielle!
I just wanted to comment quickly on this entry. While I think it has its merits and makes a lot of good points, I couldn’t help but feel that the business owner reading this may think we’re just disconnected task-performing people.
The reason I say this is because of this point: “We don’t “report” to you so we will not be filling out time reports or any other kinds of “reports” for that matter, nor attending employee meetings (virtual or otherwise). We perform work from our own facilities.”
I attend all of my client’s team meetings over the phone and I do this because I like to be involved, informed and understand what is on the forefront of my client’s business. I also do send my clients status reports whenever we have oustanding projects. I feel as though my clients deserve this since I am the sole person who handles a lot of the ‘little stuff’ and if they don’t always know what I’m taking care of, it helps for them to put it into perspective.
I can’t help but think that this may portray virtual assistants as robotic creatures who want nothing to do with our client’s businesses. For me, it’s the contrary, I want to know so that I can think bigger about their business and bring more to the table than just the tasks they are requiring me to do.
What are your thoughts on that?
Erin
Anyone who has been in the industry long knows what my teachings are about Virtual Assistance—that true Virtual Assistance, both the brand and model as it was created with intention to be, is about working on ongoing collaborative relationship with clients—not task-based, project-oriented transaction.
If you study my sites and my writings, you understand that this is what I promote in my business practice, my Virtual Assistant organization and in my mentoring of other Virtual Assistants.
My post addresses an ongoing misconception in the marketplace, one that we have battled for years but continues to persist, which is this idea that contractors are just employees clients don’t pay taxes on. I think it’s important for the future of this industry that we dispel this misunderstanding whenever possible.
If you see value in attending clients’ team meetings and expending resources to provide status reports, that’s up to you individually as a business owner. However, clients shouldn’t have that expectation as a matter of rote—they are clients, not employers. Those are things expected of an employee, not independent service providers. My personal opinion is that doing those things on a regular basis only serves to reinforce that misalignment of expectations and understandings.
I understand your interest in doing those things; you’re trying to provide exceptional service in order to create and maintain a relationship with clients that they find indispensable and incomparable. However, I would suggest to you that there are lots of ways you can be intimately involved in your clients’ businesses, provide them with red-carpet treatment and be an absolutely valuable asset they will not want to part with, all without expending any inordinate amount of your business resources.
For example, I’m very involved in my client’s businesses. I provide them with a weekly telephone meeting (same time, same day each week) which is how we maintain the relationship, stay in sync, keep each other updated, discuss goals and progress, etc. The only “status reports” I provide are via our email communications. I simply maintain a policy of exceptional communication. That’s really all that is needed.
Occasionally, I am invited to attend other kinds of meetings and when it makes sense, I’m happy to do that. But that’s never something I would do on a regular basis. And not a one of my clients would ever say, “Well, if you won’t do that, then you just aren’t of service to me.”
If I were mentoring you, I would want you to reflect and ask yourself whether you are thinking as an employee or a business owner. I would want you to consider whether you are training clients to treat you as an independent business owner or as an employee.
What if you decided at some point that regularly attending team meetings of clients was taking too much of a toll on your business time and energy, that it wasn’t critical to your performance of services and that you could still be involved closely with your clients in other ways that still left them feeling completely taken care of and well-served?
What if you decided that for those business reasons, you needed to change or modify those policies so that you could ensure your own profitable business operation and enable the continuing healthy growth of your business?
How would your clients react? Would they be a little bit resistant to change, but realize and respect that as a fellow business owner, you have to take care of business needs just like they do? Or would they behave like petulant employers with an unhealthy sense of ownership and control over you and your business? What feelings will you experience with that realization? Do you believe your value to them is contingent upon your agreement to regularly attend team meetings and submit status report?
Sometimes it take a lot more than short-term or surface thinking to determine whether a policy is really in the best interest of your business, and how and what expectations it is creating in clients, and how those expectations will affect you down the road in your business.
I staunchly believe that in thinking about the future of the industry and properly educating the marketplace that we are business owners, not employees, in turn is in the best interest for each of our individual businesses as Virtual Assistants.