I’ve been sending out a lot recently the link to our online survey (what you STILL haven’t received it?! here it is again: http://tjconsultinguk.wufoo.com/forms/online-marketing-survey-tjconsulting-va/). I do love @DesignerDepot links and tweets – some have great design ideas and tips. “VA, delegation, call [answering], time [management], admin, emails [management], [virtual] working” – are all good words illustrating what we do and how we add value to our clients. What are you talking about on Twitter? Connect with me and let’s stay in touch. continue

A recent survey by Monster.co.uk asked just under 3000 people “Is overtime considered the norm in your workplace?”

56% find themselves regularly working extra hours for no extra cash. Only 25% are paid for extra work. Only 12% reported that overtime was the exception and 7% said that they were encouraged by managers to leave on time.

Pressures from the recession and the fear to lose the job when the unemployment rate is so high caused many people to work extra hours in the fear of being “replaced”. However, if you don’t have time for extra work – explain why you can’t do it or at least can’t do it within the proposed timescale. Be confident, sincere and calm about it. If you start sounding apologetic your colleagues could assume that with persistence or by ignoring your objections they get you to agree.

At the busiest periods in your business why not use a virtual assistant to help with the additional workload! You don’t need to “hire and fire” a VA all the time, compared with a temporary employee, spending time on training and hand over. A virtual assistant can be a great asset for any business which you can bring on board as and when required, for as many hours per day or per week as you see fit. A VA can help with general administrative duties and well as to cover the skills gap in the business – like updating the website, creating promotional materials, online marketing or book-keeping. If one of your executive assistants if on holiday or off sick, you don’t need to worry about sufficiency of cover provided by other PAs. Using a VA can provide all the support your executives need on a day to day basis.

Contact us now on 020 8144 4594 to find out more and for a free consultation.

If you decided to start selling information products from your website you need to decide on how you are going to automate the delivery of purchases to your customers. Information products offer a good way of converting your knowledge and expertise into products that can be sold online and offline regardless of the amount of hours you work every day. If you are trying to implement the 4-hours-working-week concept – you know that’s something that you need to do as soon as possible. You can then use social media marketing to promote your products.

One option would be to integrate PayPal into your HTML/CSS website. It’s easy and cheap to do. Your payments will be securely processed by PayPal so you don’t need to worry about handling someone else’s card details. However the downside is that every time someone places an order for an ebook or a mp3 recording – you have to go online and send the customer the file or a link to download it. This will take time. And by no means the income, generated from such sales, can be called “passive”.

The other option is to use a shopping cart. Whichever system you are using at the moment to manage your website – WordPress, Joomla, HTML – there is a way to integrate a shopping cart solution. Some are free (like ZenCart), for some you need to pay a regular monthly free (like 1shoppingcart). However the system will handle the whole purchasing process on your behalf – from listing the products to sending a Thank You message.

The main benefits of a shopping cart over basic PayPal:

• Easier to update – you can add products & categories via an online control panel, image resizing is done for you, download links are automatically created for each product;
• Access it from anywhere – all you need is a web browser;
• Multiple payment methods already integrated – you may be able to use PayPal, Worldpay etc.;
• Automatic email notifications – you get notified of all new orders, your customers receive an automatic thank you message;
• Statistics available online, all in one place;
• You don’t need to have any technical knowledge of how to build a website;
• You can create discounts, multiple purchase offers, use affiliate schemes, send promotional emails to get customers to return and buy again;
• The purchase will get delivered automatically;
• You can create content pages to fully integrate the shopping cart into your site (or make your site as a shopping cart);
• The system will collate customers’ emails, so you can keep in touch and follow up;
• In most systems you can send a newsletter to your customers or integrate it with e-newsletter systems like Aweber, MailChimp or Constant Contact.

So very quickly you will be able to set up and manage your online store. All you need now is to finish off that e-book you were working on for a while.

The role of the virtual assistant is so varied it’s nearly impossible to make a conclusive list of tasks – but the one thing VAs are likely to have in common is diary management for busy business owners.

Juggling the appointments of a busy executive requires diplomacy, patience, forward thinking, and a reliable and effective system. Technology has made huge advances in this area and a range of software is on the market for computers and portable devices like mobile phones. Google Calendar is easy to set up on your PC or laptop, it will automatically synchronise any changes you have made in Outlook with online version in Google. You can give your virtual assistant permission to view your Google calendar in Settings. And that’s all that’s required! If you use a Blackberry or iPhone – your device can have an uptodate diary too so you know what you need to do when you are on the move.

It’s very helpful for scheduling. A virtual assistant can view multiple clients from her calendar, can email the appointments to your business partners and customers, can add notes, links to Google Maps for location, attach documents (agenda, minutes of previous meetings, action lists). It is a user-friendly, easy to use system with good options for listing tasks, colour coding and setting alarms.

What are the benefits of letting your VA coordinate your diary?

Still in doubt? Give us a call on 0203 468 8594 to discuss your particular situation and see how we can make more time in your 24h day.

Do you often find that you hire temporary staff in order to cover for a key member of staff (like executive assistants to MDs, office managers) or to cope during the extremely busy periods at work? If so, the new government announcement will have a major impact on your business.

Currently many employment law rights (the right to claim unfair dismissal, the right to a statutory redundancy payment, right to certain minimum periods of notice, etc) are only available to employees. However, the government has announced that it will implement legislation to give greater employment protection to agency workers.

The basic principle is that after 12 weeks work, agency workers should be entitled to equal treatment in terms of pay and “basic working and employment conditions”, compared to their colleagues who are directly employed or engaged by the hiring organisation (you).

So what does “equal treatment” actually mean? Under the draft regulations, agency workers would be entitled to equal treatment in relation to holidays, breaks, overtime, notice period, etc. Equal treatment in relation to “pay” would include basic salary plus other contractual benefits directly linked to the work undertaken by the agency worker. This covers holiday pay, payment for overtime, shift allowances, unsociable hours premiums. However, occupational social security schemes (such as sick pay and occupational pension rights) would be excluded. It is also proposed that from day one agency workers will have equal treatment to on-site facilities, for example, staff crèche, transport facilities, canteen.

Therefore if you regularly engage agency staff on engagements lasting for 12 weeks or more, you will need to review your policies to ensure that agency workers are treated in the same way as you would treat permanent employees.

New rules mostly likely will come into force after October 2011.

The difference between an agency worker and a virtual assistant after October 2011: