Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Category Archives: Author’s musings

Avoiding the Office Blues

This is something I’ve written about in the past but it’s a good topic and it’s raised its head again, this time via Melbourne’s Newspaper The Age.

Working at home alone isn’t for everyone.  It’s not just the ‘running a business’ and keeping track of your finances, but more the day-to-day aloneness inside the four walls of your home, without others to keep you company during the day.

We all tackle it in different ways – well, not all. Some return to work simply because they crave the daily face-to-face contact with others, even if they don’t enjoy being back in the workforce.

What about those who do succeed in staying home long-term? How do they manage it?

Perhaps it takes a specific type of person to start with. Someone who enjoys being alone.  I, for one, do not miss the office politics and games that took place when I left the corporate world over 17 years ago. I did return to a short stint (3 months) to a corporate office when my business was having challenges but that was enough to cure me and to make sure I was back in my own office fairly quickly.

But for all that, I am not home alone day in, day out because there are things I do to ensure I get some balance.

I go to the post office every single day to check my mailbox. This stemmed from taking the kids to school in the early days – it became a habit. When I return I’m returning to my ‘office’ and not my home. Made for a good change in mindset for me. And it gives me opportunity to see other people at the start of my day; often helps to set the mood for the day.

I attend business networking events on a regular basis. I used to go to a couple a week – with various groups, but these days it’s mainly my weekly BNI meeting and then occasional local council business network events.  I get to meet different people, share ideas and learn that other business owners experience similar challenges to me.

I have a hobby – regular readers here will know it’s photography. In the past I’ve attended a gym, gone for walks, written books, read books, done the gardening. Anything that will get me out of my mindset of ‘business’ and doing other things, and partly sharing time with other people.  And my cats keep me company, as does the radio which is on all day long, listening to my favourite station.  And the VA forums I belong to are also a great way to mix and mingle with others on a daily basis.

Whatever you choose, it’s important to not be working without breaks, without contact with other people, to help keep you going strongly in your home office.  Read the article mentioned at the beginning of this post for more thoughts on this topic.

The Etiquette of Approaches

Recently I’ve had approaches from a couple of people asking me to participate in a survey.  Now, there’s nothing really strange about that, except that neither of these people identified who they are, what the survey actually is about, or why they were asking me. Simply, they sent a message asking me (almost demanding) to fill in a survey. Why should I?

I  know the internet makes people ‘bolder’ and they feel they can do or say anything they want because of the anonymity they’ve been given, however I do not think that excuses lack of manners or etiquette.  Perhaps I’m being old-school, but I do feel that if I want people to participate in something, then it would be worth my while to introduce who I am, what I do, what I am planning to do (with the survey results) and why I approached the people I have approached.

I have run surveys in the past and still do. Usually via blogs I write and therefore, the audience that reads the blog is already familar with the topic, and who I am and they’re choosing to read it. So if I introduce a survey they are usually receptive towards it.  But to receive emails from people who are connected to me via some networking group doesn’t necessarily mean they can simply ‘demand’ my participation in an email without the perfunctory introductions that I feel should first take place.

Graduate Sustainability Business Program

I’m delighted to let you know that I recently graduated after doing the Sustainability Business Program that the Yarra Ranges Council puts on for businesses in their region. This is a govt subsidised program so it has the backing of the Australian government.

Why would I participate in such a program? Because I saw it as adding value to my business and alerting more people to the VA industry as a whole.

While Virtual Assistants already know and understand the benefits of operating virtually and saving on resources, energy, etc, a lot of people out there probably don’t realise that.  I mean think about it. Because we don’t travel to work by car or transport every day we save on gas, petrol, gases, and finances, not to mention not having to buy work clothing and so on.

Because we get paid for the work we do but not for sitting around time, meals, sick leave, etc, we provide our clients the opportunity to save on $$ so they can spend their money on other things to benefit their businesses or themselves.

During participation of this program (10 months) I had an assessor come here to see if he could improve on what we might already be doing in our home office.  He had a few little tips but nothing major to help us improve on what we already do with respect to resources and energy. However, he did make an observation that is relevant to our industry and not so to the other businesses he’d visited participating in the SBP. And that is, with a mother working at home, children can be at home instead of in the streets and this in itself is of great value to society at large.  This was the very reason why I began working from home in the first place.  I didn’t want my kids out on the streets or home alone without an adult being available to them. I’d forgotten the very reason and basics for starting my business in the first place!

So I’m delighted I did the program, I learnt a lot, met a lot of people and enjoyed the process.  I’m now classed as a Sustainable Business Leader and, as such, want to assure clients that I will continue to work towards sustainable business support.

My absence

Apologies to my regular readers and others.  My absence hasn’t been intended and I know it’s been an important time for our industry just in the past week with OIVAC and International VA Day.  I was supposed to be involved.

A couple of posts ago I shared that my husband had had a serious accident and is in hospital. He’s not expected to return home for some weeks yet and will have ongoing physiotherapy and other rehab things happening for months to come.  This has naturally drained me for the time I spent doing things like writing blogs, participating in my favourite hobby of photography and even cooking and gardening.  I work, go to the hospital to visit him and come back home to go to bed.

So please bare with me as I will be back with you all very soon.

Working at home has other benefits

I don’t wish anything bad upon you at all, but I do wish to share my own experience with you, and the reason why my posts suddenly stopped their usual 2-3 times a week.  I had preposted when my husband and I were away on holiday with intentions to write more once I was back in my office.  However, my husband had a serious accident at the end of Easter and ended up in hospital and I was in somewhat a stressed state – understandably.  The past week has been a blur of visits in and out of a hospital which is 50kms away, meaning that some days I was travelling up to 200kms a day just to go in and out of the hospital.

He was just shifted to rehab last night but on Friday when visiting him we discussed the need for me to continue in my business and also the need to see him every day.

One of my Virtual Assistant team members also has a husband in hospital.  He’s been in for many weeks and has ongoing medical needs that takes him in and out of hospital. I asked her how she coped with running her business and seeing her husband regularly.  She shared with me how she works from morning through to mid afternoon and then makes her trek to the hospital each day to spend the evening with her husband.  This made sense to me and I plan to do the same from today (Monday) onwards.

With respect to my husband’s injury, it relates to his spinal cord, and while we’ve been told 95% of people with this type of injury do recover, we’ve also been told it can be weeks or months.  So I have no idea how long it will be before he is back home, let alone allowed to return to work.  It would seem I will be in for at least 2 or 3 ‘new routines’ before life returns to some sort of normality for us.

And so, working at home means that I am able to make the time, or take the time, to visit my husband each day, without also having the need to travel to a job, explain to a boss, or stress about how much compassionate leave I might be entitled to.  However, given that last comment, working at home for myself also means I don’t have paid leave available to me and I do have clients who need me to be available, so it’s important to ensure I manage my time and keep people informed of when I might not be available.

If you’re running a Virtual Assistant business it is important to make sure that you keep control of the number of hours you put in and that clients can depend on you when it counts.  When you have a need to take back a bit of time for yourself, ensuring that your clients are still being looked after is important and having a team of VAs to lean on is important. I am grateful that my team are there for me to handle the phone, look after emails, and ensure that things were being tended to, in my sudden urgent need to be absent.

Don’t wait for an emergency to happen before you set systems in place – do it now and make it a habit.  Systems will help you keep your business running when something out of the ordinary happens and you need to withdraw for a period of time.