As the cash continues to roll in, the future of your business is looking bright. You eventually reach a point when you have to hire more remote assistants. The recruitment process isn’t to be taken lightly, though: adding people to your workforce is more than just selecting from a pool of candidates.

Training is also an important factor to consider. After all, you can’t expect the newbie to know their way around your internal processes on their first day. While they can learn some parts on the go, there are things that must be taught formally. They’re also more likely to stay if they are trained effectively.

Creating a supportive environment where your new hire will thrive is crucial. But how can this be achieved while keeping up with your own current workload? You have to learn how to balance being both a people manager and an individual contributor. Here are some tips.

Know Your Priorities

Examine the tasks currently on your plate. Training a new virtual assistant is an additional responsibility. This means you may have to remove an assignment from your schedule to make room.

Take a look at:

• How you’ve been spending your time.
• What the most important things are.
• What can be delegated to someone else for the time being.
• What’s taking up a lot of your time.
• What you should be focusing more on.

If you find that there’s too much work to do on top of training, consider reconfiguring a few things. For instance, if you’ve been spending hours answering basic questions from lower-level employees, you can a) make an FAQ they can refer to or b) add another layer of management.

Maximise Your Calendar

Learn to properly utilise your calendar by scheduling your week ahead. Be sure to allow for some flexibility in case you need to extend training sessions. Don’t forget to put in breaks to rest and recharge too.

Use your calendar for:

• Scheduling one-on-one meetings with your remote virtual assistant.
• Outlining what projects to work on and when.
• Setting a time for you to focus on your work without interruption.

This will help ensure you’re spending your time wisely and holding yourself accountable. Plus, it enables you to visualise your workdays to prevent issues of overlapping meetings or lacking flexible time.

Check In Regularly

Schedule a regular check-in with your new hire several times a week, if not every day. Doing so will give them room to set long-term goals, ask any questions, give feedback, and discuss any difficulties encountered.

You’ll also avoid being interrupted every minute since it will condense their conversations with you into the sessions. Anyway, you can taper off the frequency to once a week or every two weeks as they get a better feel of the work.

Protecting your own time is just as important as dedicating time to the new employee. Hence, you’ll want to cut down these meetings as early as possible. Onboarding documents or tutorials can come in handy for this purpose.

Rely on Your Team

Unless the new hire is your very first employee, you likely manage an entire team of fully-trained remote assistants at this point. It’s a smart move to draw on their collective expertise in training the newbie.

Already have a team lead or supervisor who can handle basic questions from the newly hired staff in the Philippines? Let them handle it, then. If you don’t have one yet, this is their chance to step up and enter a leadership role. Pick someone with tenure and is interested in learning how to manage people.

With this, you can have more time in your day and express your trust in your virtual assistant in the Philippines team at the same time. Letting your other remote virtual assistant employees carry some of the responsibility will boost their morale and help you invest in their professional development as well.

Set Some Boundaries

Make it a goal that every virtual assistant who works for you will feel comfortable with approaching you for questions. Even so, there should be limitations so you can get work done without constant interruption.

A huge part-time virtual assistant of this is done by setting expectations and communicating your needs. If you prefer receiving an email for less urgent concerns, tell the team and new hire about this from the get-go. Share your calendar so they can check when would be the best time to contact you.

Of course, the newbie might have a hard time determining whether a matter is urgent or not. You can make use of a confirmation process of sorts for this. For instance, ask if they need your answer before they can proceed with the next step or another assignment.

Conclusion

It can be overwhelming to train a new hire staff Philippines and manage your workload at the same time. We hope that with the above tips, you can find your management groove and set yourself up for success.

Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about this when you work with Remote Workmate. We onboard our remote assistants on their first day. This enables them to be productive when they start so you can focus on tasks outside of training.