Increasing your resources without the hassle of being an employer.

Hiring a Tailored Time Virtual Personal Assistant is no different than hiring a full time assistant. The main difference is that we have selected the PA for you and we are the guarantor of the quality of the work she will do for you. So you do not need to select CV's. Organise interviews, check references, etc.

In addition, you do not have to support the cost of PAYE, holiday entitlement, pauses, absences, computer equipment, office space, etc. Your only cost is for the work effectively done, with the added advantage that your Virtual PA is available for you on demand, like a full time employee.

Whilst Tailored Time is responsible for the quality of the service you are getting, you remain the boss and you define the tasks you need done for you, the timetables and agendas.

Our Virtual PA's are all experienced in their field, having supported managers at a director or even VP level for most of them. Whilst they may not know your precise field of business, they make up for it by their abilities, motivation and adaptability.
Our Virtual PA's have a vested interest in supporting you to the best of their abilities and to ensure you receive the service you bargained for. Their primary motivation is a life style decision to become a virtual PA rather than working in full time employment.

Work closely with your PA and you will be rewarded several fold.

Becoming the backbone of your business.

Working with a virtual PA is above else, a trusted relationship. You will share your business information and you need to be confident that this information will remain confidential and will be protected. Part of our T&C's include a confidentiality agreement and so does our employment contract. We will be happy to sign with you both as Tailored Time and directly with your PA a confidentiality agreement.

As a company, we are also taking steps to protect your confidential information.

In a well managed relationship, your PA will quickly become the backbone of your business. To do so, here are some recommendations:

1. Your communication and understanding of each other is the key to a successful relation with your PA. This is why it is important at the outset to spend time to train your PA about:
   - Your company, its product and services
   - Your working environment
   - Your work constraints
   - Your expectations
   

   Spend time to explain your preferences: do you have a specific font you like to us on e-mails, is there some specific vocabulary to your field that she needs to know, where can she get access to the information she needs, what is the best way to get hold of you, etc.

2. Be clear on what you want and how you want things to be done. Please remember that you will rarely see your PA, and that your main mean of communication is via telephone and e-mail.

   If you need things to be done or presented a certain way, the best thing to do is to send her some examples and comment them over the phone or in an e-mail.

   Organise some dry run if this make since. For example if you have a specific tone or vocabulary in e-mails, a specific way to write follow up e-mails after a networking event, or an exhibition. Or you may prefer to let your PA be creative and you review the first few notes before she send information to your customers.

3. Talk regularly. Most of our customers have a weekly call organised with their PA to plan the week ahead and then talked to them occasionally during the week. Do not be afraid to ask personal questions and build a rapport. This is the time for you to create a bond and understanding. A time to explain what you need and to further her training. It is a time to discuss what more she can do for you or to discuss ways to improve the workflow between the two of you.
   
   
4. Give her the tools to do the work for you. We highly recommend that:
   - You create an e-mail address for you PA under you company format. We can help you with various systems if you do not have your own company e-mail address.
   - You share your agenda using Google agenda (Outlook agenda can be synchronised with Google agenda)
   - You share your contact, in particular if she needs to contact your customers, suppliers, etc.
   - You share your CRM, or use a cloud based CRM application, so she can keep it up to date for you.
   - She has an easy access to the documents she needs to share with you or the documents she needs to send to your customers and contacts.
   
   
5. Update your PA about the evolution of your business, the highs and the eventual lows. Let her know what is happening, your upcoming projects, etc.
   
   
6. Make with your PA the list of things she needs to keep an eye on for you and remind you of in due course. It may be upcoming events, meetings, information to be sent, people you need to call, reports you need to prepare, special date you need to remember, a deadline you must remember (like your VAT return for example), and let her keep this information as a task list to remind you of in due course.
   
   
7. Give her space to ask you questions or double check with you if she understood correctly.
   
   
8. Agree on timelines for the work that needs to be done. Your PA will have several customers and will have to juggle with deadlines and needs of several of her customers. It is important that you agree when a particular job needs to be completed.
   
   
9. Praise her when she did a good job and work with her if she did not achieve exactly what you wanted the way you wanted.
   
   
10. Discuss openly how she can help you more or do more for you. Our PA's are not afraid to step out of their comfort zones and rise to a new challenge.

Each of our customer's has different needs and requirements. Adaptability is one of our PA's strongest qualities. Though nothing will replace the quality of the relationship you will create.

Last but not least, we will talk to you regularly to understand how our services are working for you and see how we can improve to serve you better. We have a quality survey that we send every two month and that we will ask you to return to us, but we like to talk to our customers regularly. We feel it is also very important that you feel free to contact the management of Tailored Time whenever you need to let us know if things can be improved or if there is any issue that will require our full attention. Your feed back is what help us improve and be more useful and efficient for you.

We are always here when you need us

The main benefit of a Virtual PA over using a temp coming to your office at set times and day, is the permanent availability of our PA's for you. We recommend that you make use of this facility.

As we try to improve all the time, we are putting in place tools to allow you to communicate with you PA more easily and monitor the work done for you on a regular basis. Our internet platform will allow you to add tasks, exchange information and files, check if a tasks you requested have been done at all time of day and night.

And we are constantly looking for tools and solutions that can help even further the running of your business and the interactions with Tailored Time personnel.

During holidays or prolonged absence we will organise a minimum cover so you can still be supported even though your PA is not available. For this reason we are creating a "customer handbook" for each of our customers, so it makes it easier to transfer information to a new PA. This handbook will be developed during the first three month of you working with us and updated on a regular basis. We may ask from time to time to help with a review of this handbook to ensure that all information is correct.