Summary: As an entrepreneur who ventures in an online business, you will want to hire virtual staff. The process is called outsourcing where entrepreneurs look for staff in several online recruitment websites like timetoreplacemyself.com. Did you know that about 90% of problems encountered in a business are staff-related? Rick, who has been outsourcing for many years, attests that 90% of problems in a business are staff-related. While issues among customers and supply happen, problems among your employees are inevitable. “People are not robots that you can control. They make their own decisions and right or wrong you as the business owner with the decisions that they’ve made,” Rick explained in a podcast. People are people. – Rick For Employers: 3 Tips when working with virtual staff 1. Let some issues slide. As a boss, you want to be lenient, a bit, towards your virtual staff. This is a little different than when handling people or employees who are actually working in a real office. “There comes a point where you can’t sweat the petty things…” 2. Talk with tact and good direction. Handling your staff can be like raising kids, there is a proper way of saying things like, “you know the way you phrased x is maybe not how I would have phrased it. I probably would have phrased it this way” rather than saying “you know what that was wrong. You should do it this way.” Dealing with tact and direction helps keeps your staff happy enough that they don’t easily quit on you. “No one likes to be told that they’re wrong. Ever. Everyone always does what they think is right at the time and that’s just how life works.” 3. Employ a system that will help accelerate things and move ahead. Advantages of hiring virtual staff 1. Hiring staff is a great help. While entrepreneurs are busy generating more revenues, they just don’t have enough hours in a day to do the job physically unless they hire people. For example, Rick hires staff to develop a website so he can focus on customer service and sales. 2. Having reliable staff around helps get the job done 3. Pay skills are different than local pay skills. You can save a fraction of the cost when hiring virtual workers than local workers with the same skill set that you need. 4. Employer does not need to pay for tax 5. Employer does not need to provide office equipmemt The Bane: On firing virtual staff Bosses do not like to fire anybody but what if there is no more work to do? “I think the way one needs to approach a firing is by looking at it and saying people fire themselves. – Rick” Based on Rick’s experience with staff, he believes that workers make the decision for the boss and the boss is just the one who pulls the trigger on it. Rick said that it’s been easier to let a few things slide but the problem of that is these can lead into larger things. They become an issue. “Oh yes sir, I’m sorry, I’ll get rid on that, I’ll fix that, I shouldn’t have done that..Blah…blah blah blah and it’s good for a couple of weeks and then they slide back in the old habits. So I can’t have that,” Rick said. “This person is putting in a good solid eight hours worth of work in a 30-day month that they’re being paid for. Yes I’m not paying them nearly what I would pay someone physically working here but you know what I’m not getting even the little bit that I’m paying for.” To put it simply, a boss might just need to let go after a staff “makes that decision for him.” Bosses can’t pay for people who just sit around do nothing. It will mean that there is nothing to feel bad about “letting go” because that worker himself made that decision for the boss to fire him. “They made that choice for me,” Rick strongly asserted. Time management is another factor that makes firing happen. Daily reports, when asked by your boss, should be complied. It gives employers a heads-up that things are actually being done, otherwise it is time to let go. Running a business is about managin[...]
