FAQ - Outsourcing Work to Staff India
Our rates are USD and GBP only. Sometime we can fix the rate in other currencies to eliminate currency fluctuations to you.
We can let you have a 1 week free trial with your first virtual employee. This gives you a risk free way of testing the waters with us, as we want to ensure you are comfortable with everything.
The free trial works like this:
a. If you decide that our virtual staffing solution will not work for you, then there is no obligation to continue, or pay your virtual staff for the one week. We will cover the salary cost.
b. If you decide to continue with your virtual staff, then you will be sent an invoice to cover your virtual staff’s salary for the month going forward, including the one week.
c. A free trial is only available 1 time as it is designed to let you see how working with virtual employees is like.
The free trial works like this:
a. If you decide that our virtual staffing solution will not work for you, then there is no obligation to continue, or pay your virtual staff for the one week. We will cover the salary cost.
b. If you decide to continue with your virtual staff, then you will be sent an invoice to cover your virtual staff’s salary for the month going forward, including the one week.
c. A free trial is only available 1 time as it is designed to let you see how working with virtual employees is like.
There is no extra work for you to do at all. I just need you to sign couple of documents and that’s it, I do the rest.
I will select the most suitable candidates based on our requirements. Im pretty accurate at this as I have been working with offshore guys for 6 years now. Of course I do make mistakes now and again, and should be find the candidate isn’t quite right, we can simply change the person without incurring any extra cost to you.
I will select the most suitable candidates based on our requirements. Im pretty accurate at this as I have been working with offshore guys for 6 years now. Of course I do make mistakes now and again, and should be find the candidate isn’t quite right, we can simply change the person without incurring any extra cost to you.
We usually aim to have virtual staff ready for our client within 2 weeks of receiving the signed terms of business. There have been instances where we have managed to allocated within a few days, but this largely depends on which employees we have sitting on the bench waiting to be allocated.
For your role, as far as I understand, I may have just the right person ready on stand by. I will aim to fully clarify this during our conversation tomorrow, as my role is to understand your requirement and match you with the most suited candidate.
For your role, as far as I understand, I may have just the right person ready on stand by. I will aim to fully clarify this during our conversation tomorrow, as my role is to understand your requirement and match you with the most suited candidate.
In terms of software requirements you are more than welcome to provide any software you wish your employee to work with.
To work for your from our offices, your employee will be fully equipped:
- Their own desk
- Their own Dell laptop
- Printer and scanner
- Commonly used software
- Peripherals such as webcam, headset etc
- Broadband internet connection
- Power generators for uninterrupted electricity supply avoiding cut-outs
- Air conditioning at all times
To work for your from our offices, your employee will be fully equipped:
- Their own desk
- Their own Dell laptop
- Printer and scanner
- Commonly used software
- Peripherals such as webcam, headset etc
- Broadband internet connection
- Power generators for uninterrupted electricity supply avoiding cut-outs
- Air conditioning at all times
With regards to interview and CVs, I’m afraid we do not provide CVs or candidates for interview and selection by our clients. But rather, taken from the clients requirements obtained during the consultation process, we assign the best fit candidate to the client. If anyhow the candidate is unable to perform to your expectations (very rare) we can change the candidate for you. We are usually very accurate with this, as you may have learnt from the client reference I have provided you. All candidates are our own employees who work for us on internal projects whilst unassigned to a client.
As you can appreciate, not all employment markets are the same, due to the cultural differences, language complexity and various other reasons, most employers are not suited to selecting a candidate properly from our offshore offices.
You can rest assured we hire capable individuals as they go through a rigorous 3 stage interview process held personally by our founder who is an ex-Accenture Consultant. We believe in hiring the best available candidates in the job market we operate in, for our own organisation and for our clients.
As you can appreciate, not all employment markets are the same, due to the cultural differences, language complexity and various other reasons, most employers are not suited to selecting a candidate properly from our offshore offices.
You can rest assured we hire capable individuals as they go through a rigorous 3 stage interview process held personally by our founder who is an ex-Accenture Consultant. We believe in hiring the best available candidates in the job market we operate in, for our own organisation and for our clients.
Just like have a standard employee in your office sick leave is one of those issues employers have to put up with. You can decide how many days sick leave you want to allow, its totally your discretion. I would suggest making this clear with your new employee so they know where they stand. However, in all honesty, our employees hardly take sick leave, so you shouldn’t have any difficulties with this.
If an employee is taking excessive sick leave, suggesting they may be abusing the system and taking pay whilst being sick, we are sure to notice this as they are monitored on a daily basis.
With regards to holidays, as the employees are in another country, there is a slight overlap in terms of UK public holidays and their local country national holidays.
I will a holiday schedule for your perusal. Again just as having standard employees, your are obliged to allow mandatory holidays off for your outsourced employee.
If an employee is taking excessive sick leave, suggesting they may be abusing the system and taking pay whilst being sick, we are sure to notice this as they are monitored on a daily basis.
With regards to holidays, as the employees are in another country, there is a slight overlap in terms of UK public holidays and their local country national holidays.
I will a holiday schedule for your perusal. Again just as having standard employees, your are obliged to allow mandatory holidays off for your outsourced employee.
Absolutely. I am just waiting for my colleague to give me a preliminary availability of a suitable employee for you, once I have this information for you and providing you are ok with this, we can go ahead and sign the terms of business. Upon receiving the terms of business, as soon as the payment has been received your employee can start with you.
With all our clients, we provide the manpower for them to get their work done.
You manage your employees as and how you wish, after all you are paying their salary (providing the task sets are within their skill set).
You communicate with them via email and skype, provide remote training where need be, have conference meetings etc as required. A Consultant will be your point of contact for any ongoing help you may require for example working out ways to improve performance from your employee, monitoring etc.
You manage your employees as and how you wish, after all you are paying their salary (providing the task sets are within their skill set).
You communicate with them via email and skype, provide remote training where need be, have conference meetings etc as required. A Consultant will be your point of contact for any ongoing help you may require for example working out ways to improve performance from your employee, monitoring etc.
A full time Employee will work for you Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm UK Time, this ensures your employee is accessible to you at all time, and you can work real-time with them. You new employee will be online all the time on Skype and Email, via which you can communicate and relay instructions.
As the ‘effective employer’ you are obliged to permit regular breaks for tea and lunch, this also ensure you are getting consistent performance, as you know, breaks are important during work.
We do not provide employee interviewing, as all candidates assigned are internally by us and already working on our projects. You can rest assured we hire capable individuals as they go through a rigorous 3 stage interview process.
Payment needs to be made via BACS, allowing at least 3 days for the payment to reach us on the 1st of the month. This ensure we remit the salaries to the employees on time. This amount is payable to your UK Company account (details of which I will provide once you have decided to go ahead with us). Should you start your first month on a date other than the 1st then the first payment will be calculated pro rota.
Yes. They are fully equipped to work with you. You will communicate with your employee largely via skype IM and email. You are also able to do voice calls over skype. However we encourage the use of email predominantly as this ensures a record of communication is maintained, in the unlikely event that something should go wrong.
Absolutely. Your employee is solely assigned to you, working under your management.
Absolutely. Our employees work from our offshore offices, we provide all the infrastructure, and equip your employee fully to work for you.
Stage 1: A screening phase when hundreds of applicants will be assessed for the basic English and Maths skills.
Stage 2: A one to one interview with our directors to assess the applicants’ intelligence, enthusiasm, dedication and motivation.
Stage 3: A full day workshop to filter the best of the best through simulating a real working day for a UK company.
Stage 2: A one to one interview with our directors to assess the applicants’ intelligence, enthusiasm, dedication and motivation.
Stage 3: A full day workshop to filter the best of the best through simulating a real working day for a UK company.
Generally a annual payrise of 5-10% is acceptable.
All employees are supervised by a Shift Manager and or the American Operations Manager. You will be given direct access to them at all times, and any problems you may have can be directly forwarded to their attention.
We don't implement an SSL network due to so many clients that we deal with wanting all different policies and practices set up for their security to their company network, the solution for this is we suggest to comply with your companies network security policies and that you set up a VPN (virtual private network) where your offshore employee will connect over the internet to your VPN server and this will then give him a secure tunnel to your location where you can implement what security you so desire. This is particularly useful if your employee needs access to secure files, printers, or servers.
Unfortunately, we do not allow employees to directly or indirectly receive any sort of bonus, salary increase, incentive, commissions, etc. However, if you strongly feel the need to reward your employee, you may forward this to our HR Department to guide you on what is suitable and what is not.
Employees hired by us go through a rigorous screening process, in which we conduct very thorough personal background and employment history checks. We do not hire employees with a history of tardiness, unreliability, or non-attendance. We also do workshops every employee and do other in house tests to make sure that we are doing every possible to have the right employee.
We take our clients data protection very seriously.
We maintain a safe and secure network and keep our security patches up to date when they arise. Our facility is secure and the building has 24/7 armed security. Before entering the office all employees must sign in using our clock in system. Employees also have to sign a non compete and non disclosure agreement with us.
We maintain a safe and secure network and keep our security patches up to date when they arise. Our facility is secure and the building has 24/7 armed security. Before entering the office all employees must sign in using our clock in system. Employees also have to sign a non compete and non disclosure agreement with us.
Statistically our average is about 18 months. We are making efforts to bring that average up to 21-24 moths. However having said that, there are a large portion of employees who have been with us for 3-5 years!
This is quite rare if I am honest. Being a small job market, we are recognised as a “good employer” in the region, so people generally want to work with us, and stay with us. Of course there are always people who take on a job to pass time until they get something more aligned with their background, which is unavoidable. But we try to keep our ears open for any gossip/rumours about anyone leaving, looking for another job etc. and if I come to know anything I discuss the case with my clietns as soon as I find out.
If you are worried about stability in terms of man power, I would recommend moving towards have 2 people as soon as you can, and have both person cross trained so that they can both cover each others tasks. That way if there was an adverse situation with one employee, the other can simply take over.
If you are worried about stability in terms of man power, I would recommend moving towards have 2 people as soon as you can, and have both person cross trained so that they can both cover each others tasks. That way if there was an adverse situation with one employee, the other can simply take over.
Yes this is an entry level role, and if Seth eventually became a Team Leader I would recommend increasing his pay by say $1 per hour. This will incentivise him to “want to take the lead and the burden of extra responsilbity” – exactly as we would do with team leaders in UK/USA.
Generally, when a team size reaches 4 people, I advise my clients ot assign someone as a Team Leader. This has few key benefits, couple of obvious ones to mention are:
a. It will make your work life much easier if simply liaise directly with one person and he/she delegates and co-ordinates the other team members (of course the other team members can update you directly so that you are aware of everything that’s happening).
b. It makes scaling up much easier if you start building a team structure early, so that when you need more people, its essentially hiring a person and plugging them into the appropriate role and training them up.
Generally, when a team size reaches 4 people, I advise my clients ot assign someone as a Team Leader. This has few key benefits, couple of obvious ones to mention are:
a. It will make your work life much easier if simply liaise directly with one person and he/she delegates and co-ordinates the other team members (of course the other team members can update you directly so that you are aware of everything that’s happening).
b. It makes scaling up much easier if you start building a team structure early, so that when you need more people, its essentially hiring a person and plugging them into the appropriate role and training them up.
None at all. We have a very strict “work only” environment.
Regretfully no. and I personally wouldn’t encourage adding multiple monitors to their work stations. Although you and I may be able to use multiple screen skill fully (which I personally found took me many months of getting used to, until eventually I was using 4 screens at a time), given the virtual employees narrow skills set and acumen you will most likely find they are either not using the extra monitors properly, or struggling more to co-ordinate themselves with multiple monitors.
This is mostly your and VE's discretion. You guys can work out a comfortable routine for both. We try to be as flexible for our client as possible.
Every employee works an 8 hour shift (which can be stretched to at most 10 shift). So yes, afer 9pm EST your virtual employee would have gone home.
Of course if oyu need to adjust their working hours do let me know.
Of course if oyu need to adjust their working hours do let me know.
Employees do have sick time off now and again, but its quite minimal if I am honest, culturally things are quite different in the offshore office, and I have found people hardly take sick leave. A full week of sick leave is very unlikely, it has probably every happened twice in our office where the employees were really ill. Of course if a person falls in this situation that they have to a full week off, you would see 1 week refund on the following months invoice. However for normal absences/sick leave we ask clients to be considerate of this as the employees are human too, so there is no refund for those cases.
If your employee fails to do the work properly after giving him proper training and guidance, we can have a chat and decide on “changing the employees for a different one”. My job is to make this work for you, so you will have my support all the way.
If your employee fails to do the work properly after giving him proper training and guidance, we can have a chat and decide on “changing the employees for a different one”. My job is to make this work for you, so you will have my support all the way.
I assure you, you’re in good hands. I would love to help you build a virtual team of 10+ virtual employees! At the moment we have around 100 employees, so we’re not a very large outfit, and I’m being totally honest here with you. However most importantly all my clients get my full attention, and I do the best I can to make thigns work for my clients.
Regretfully I am unable to give you refreences of other companies, you may have noticed our website doesn’t even have any testimonial except for one. And that is simply because we honour client confidentiality, and most of our clients choose not to be known as outsourcing.
Regretfully I am unable to give you refreences of other companies, you may have noticed our website doesn’t even have any testimonial except for one. And that is simply because we honour client confidentiality, and most of our clients choose not to be known as outsourcing.
With regards to interview and CVs, I’m afraid we do not provide CVs or candidates for interview and selection by our clients. But rather, taken from the clients requirements obtained during the consultation process, we assign the best fit candidate to the client. If anyhow the candidate is unable to perform to your expectations (very rare) we can change the candidate for you. We are usually very accurate with this, as you may have learnt from the client reference I have provided you. All candidates are our own employees who work for us on internal projects whilst unassigned to a client.
As you can appreciate, not all employment markets are the same, due to the cultural differences, language complexity and various other reasons, most employers are not suited to selecting a candidate properly from our offshore offices.
As you can appreciate, not all employment markets are the same, due to the cultural differences, language complexity and various other reasons, most employers are not suited to selecting a candidate properly from our offshore offices.
The rate varies depending on the type of developer you need. $5.9 9 is the starting rate for an average developer.
I generally judge what sort of developer you would need based on your requirements. Generally speaking, the more challenging the role is the higher the pay rate. As a guide, developers pay rate are between $5.99 - $8.99 so its quite a narrow low range, as we focus mainly on the mid-level developers which gives our clients the best value in terms of ability and cost.
I generally judge what sort of developer you would need based on your requirements. Generally speaking, the more challenging the role is the higher the pay rate. As a guide, developers pay rate are between $5.99 - $8.99 so its quite a narrow low range, as we focus mainly on the mid-level developers which gives our clients the best value in terms of ability and cost.
Absolutely no fees other than the developers salary. I would send you an invoice at the start of each month to send your virtual developers salary to our company account, and we would handle the payroll etc. for you its simple as paying their salary on a monthly basis and working with them on a day to day basis.
Absolutely none. Most other outsourcing firms to charge extra. We simply don’t see the need to do this. Our argument is – why should we charge for an account manager, when we need to hire an account manager regardless?
No minimum contract period. We have structured our solution very much like hiring your own employee. So your virtual developer works exclusively for you. dedicated to you. you pay them on a monthly basis. You hire them for as long as you need. And when you don’t have a business requirement for this virtual employee, you simply let me know and you can make them redundant.
Yes absolutely. Your virtual employee belongs to you, you manage and instruct them as you feel comfortable. They report to you directly.
full time employees work 5 days per week, 8 hours per day.
Part time employees work 5 days per week, 5 hours per day.
Part time employees work 5 days per week, 5 hours per day.
No. Legally your Employee is employed by My Virtual People. Subsequently you have no tax, insurance or employment law obligations/liabilities. You are paying for a service, which includes: an Employee, office space, office equipment, management services, technical support...etc.
Unlike other firms we do not tie you down to long term contracts, our agreement is essentially a 30 day rolling contract, you simply need to give 30 days notice to terminate the contract. We have tried to keep our model as similar to hiring a local employee in your office.
Yes. All employees abroad are synchronised to work when you are working.
Your Employee works 8 hours per day. This does not include any time taken for breaks or for meals. Typically A full time employee will work for you Mon-Fri 9am – 5pm UK Time (unless your Consultant has agreed a different time with you), this ensures your employee is accessible to you at all time, and you can work real-time with them. As the ‘effective employer’ you are obliged to permit regular breaks for tea and lunch, this also ensure you are getting consistent performance, as you know, breaks are important during work. This will be your responsibility to ensure you treat and maintain your outsourced employee with the same etiquette and standard.
The fee quoted to you is the full and complete cost. The fee charged covers everything from, the Employee’s salary, office space, office equipment, internet connection, telephone, management services, technical support etc.
My Virtual People Logistics Mangers are monitoring your Employee working at all times. Our Consultants will also show you methods and techniques we advise you deploy to get the most out of your employee and obtain good performance. It will feel like they are working in the same office! Furthermore you will be able to judge your Employee’s effort and performance from the results he/she produces.
No fees are charged until you have decided to hire an employee or employees. We will offer our ongoing Consultation for free, support you to get you started, do the all due diligence prior etc.
We take our client confidentiality, trade secrets and IP very seriously. We are proud to say that in 6 years we have never had any breach.
My Virtual People and your Employee you hire will sign any legally binding non-disclosure agreement you have for the handling of any sensitive data/information. Our agreement also cover this for you.
My Virtual People and your Employee you hire will sign any legally binding non-disclosure agreement you have for the handling of any sensitive data/information. Our agreement also cover this for you.
Your outsourced virtual staff is effectively your employee, therefore, as with your own employees in your office you are expectd to treat them and honour any holiday/time off requirements as normal. Your Consultant will email you an Holiday Schedule for the year so you know which holidays are permittable. In the event that you may instruct your employee to take time off for reasons relevant to your business i.e. down-time, you will still be billed.
We will provide employees who can deliver for your job specification. If however the employee does not deliver to the expected standard you may choose to 'make redundant' your current employee and hire a replacement employee.
Yes. We can provide Employee’s who have a significantly neutral accent in comparison. However as you can appreciate it will never be a native english accent.
The complete process of Consulting with you, understanding your needs, doing all the paperwork and allocating an employee to work for you takes 2 weeks. We usually aim to have virtual staff ready for our client within 2 weeks of receiving the signed terms of business. There have been instances where we have managed to allocated within a few days, but this largely depends on which employees we have sitting on the bench waiting to be allocated.
In terms of software requirements you are more than welcome to provide any software you wish your employee to work with.
To work for your from our offices, your employee will be fully equipped:
- Their own desk
- Their own Dell laptop
- Printer and scanner
- Commonly used software
- Peripherals such as webcam, headset etc
- Broadband internet connection
- Power generators for uninterrupted electricity supply avoiding cut-outs
- Air conditioning at all times
To work for your from our offices, your employee will be fully equipped:
- Their own desk
- Their own Dell laptop
- Printer and scanner
- Commonly used software
- Peripherals such as webcam, headset etc
- Broadband internet connection
- Power generators for uninterrupted electricity supply avoiding cut-outs
- Air conditioning at all times
As a general rule any office based employee you would find in the USA or Europe will also be available in our offices abroad. The indian sub continent is renowned for its technical talent, with companies such as IBM, Dell and HSBC employing thousands of employee’s in India. Furthermore all our staff are hand picked and trained by us to deliver a quality service to employers equivalent to that in the UK.
Yes. Any incentives you offer will be passed through our standard accounting process in reaching your Employee. However all such incentive schemes should only be discussed with our Consultants who will brief your employee. This ensures all our staff remain neutral to greed and ensures we maintain an equilibrium amongst all our employees.
It is highly unlikely the Employee you hire will leave. Working for foreign companies is a great opportunity for Indians and they are highly motivated at the prospect of doing so. Additionally, we offer competitive salaries and a professional working environment. Working for an Indian company is the only alternative for Indians. As the working conditions with Indian companies are below international standards, the positions we offer are consequently very appealing to the employees.
We do not provide CVs or candidates for interview and selection by our clients. But rather, taken from the clients requirements obtained during the consultation process, we assign the best fit candidate to the client. If anyhow the candidate is unable to perform to your expectations (very rare) we can change the candidate for you. We are usually very accurate with this. All candidates are our own employees who work for us on internal projects whilst unassigned to a client.
Not all employment markets are the same, due to the cultural differences, language complexity and various other reasons, most employers are not suited to selecting a candidate properly from our offshore offices.
You can rest assured we hire capable individuals as they go through a rigorous 3 stage interview process held personally by our founder who is an ex-Accenture Consultant. We believe in hiring the best available candidates in the job market we operate in, for our own organisation and for our clients.
Not all employment markets are the same, due to the cultural differences, language complexity and various other reasons, most employers are not suited to selecting a candidate properly from our offshore offices.
You can rest assured we hire capable individuals as they go through a rigorous 3 stage interview process held personally by our founder who is an ex-Accenture Consultant. We believe in hiring the best available candidates in the job market we operate in, for our own organisation and for our clients.
Just like have a standard employee in your office sick leave is one of those issues employers have to put up with. You can decide how many days sick leave you want to allow, it is totally your discretion. We would suggest making this clear with your new employee so they know where they stand. However, you will find, our employees hardly take sick leave, so you shouldn’t have any difficulties with this.
If an employee is taking excessive sick leave, suggesting they may be abusing the system and taking pay whilst being sick, we are sure to notice this as they are monitored on a daily basis.
With regards to holidays, as the employees are in another country, there is a slight overlap in terms of UK public holidays and their local country national holidays.
Your Consultant will email a holiday schedule for your perusal. Again just as having standard employees, your are obliged to allow mandatory holidays off for your outsourced employee.
Absolutely. There are only 2 bits of small paperwork that your Consultant needs to do with you. We have made the setup process as easy and hassle free for our clients as possible, where we do all the form filling and you only do the signing.
As the ‘effective employer’ you are obliged to permit regular breaks for tea and lunch, this also ensure you are getting consistent performance, as you know, breaks are important during work.
Yes. They are fully equipped to work with you. You will communicate with your employee largely via skype IM and email. You are also able to do voice calls over skype. However we encourage the use of email predominantly as this ensures a record of communication is maintained, in the unlikely event that something should go wrong.
Your employee is exclusively assigned to you, working under your management. We do not allow sharing of employees between clients on a part time basis.
bsolutely. Our employees work from our offshore offices, we provide all the infrastructure, and equip your employee fully to work for you.
All employees hired by Staff India go through a rigorous screening process, in which we conduct very thorough personal background and employment history checks. We do not hire employees with a history of tardiness, unreliability, or non-attendance. We do in house tests to make sure that we are doing every possible to have the right employee. Your Consultant will aim to understand your requirements in details and allocate a suitable employee.
ou can ask your employee to email you a daily status report in any form you want. These may include text files of daily report sheets, visual updates (sometimes known as "before and after" images), Web 2.0 docs or other updates that you may require.
Every employee must give 30 days written notice if they decide to resign, this should be enough time to replace a new employee and do the proper training and turnover. The average turnover can be done in less than 15 days, and it will not cost you extra.
Although we have systems to prevent this as much as possible, in the event this where to occur, our Local Managers will address any concerns with the employee and ensure to resume your normal course of business.
We will do everything to support you setting up your outsourced virtual employees.
The setup for this will depend on whether you want to make just outbound calls, or receive inbound calls as well. Inbound calls a free, but if your virtual employee needs to make outgoing calls, you will pay the call costs.
To give you more control over this, Skype has a very cost effective solution that we propose our clients use.
In summary this is how Skype solution works:
You purchase a local Seychelles number. (Or even better, a local number of the country from where most of your clients are, that way your call costs will be cheaper)
If you have a current office number, redirect to this new number which your Virtual Assistants will have
You control the skype account and top up call credit when required. That why you manage the expenses.
You can learn more about skype solution here: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/prices/pay-monthly/uk-unlimited-calling-plans/?intcmp=ch1-subs-ukpromo
The setup for this will depend on whether you want to make just outbound calls, or receive inbound calls as well. Inbound calls a free, but if your virtual employee needs to make outgoing calls, you will pay the call costs.
To give you more control over this, Skype has a very cost effective solution that we propose our clients use.
In summary this is how Skype solution works:
You purchase a local Seychelles number. (Or even better, a local number of the country from where most of your clients are, that way your call costs will be cheaper)
If you have a current office number, redirect to this new number which your Virtual Assistants will have
You control the skype account and top up call credit when required. That why you manage the expenses.
You can learn more about skype solution here: http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/prices/pay-monthly/uk-unlimited-calling-plans/?intcmp=ch1-subs-ukpromo
European languages speakers, other than English are not widely available in our current employment market. However we will endeavour to meet this requirement should a client need.
The salary payments are your final payments, no hidden costs, not extras, no tax, no insurance contribution, nothing.
All staff salary payments need to be paid monthly on the 1st of every month. This allows us enough time to ensure salaries are received by the outsourced staff abroad by the end of the month.
Salaries need to be paid 1 month in advance to our UK bank account via BACS or Standing Order. We do not take credit or debit cards. If you are starting on a date other than the 1st of the month, your first month will be billed at full rate, and your second month will be billed at pro-rota rate to minus the days you missed on the first month.
All staff salary payments need to be paid monthly on the 1st of every month. This allows us enough time to ensure salaries are received by the outsourced staff abroad by the end of the month.
Salaries need to be paid 1 month in advance to our UK bank account via BACS or Standing Order. We do not take credit or debit cards. If you are starting on a date other than the 1st of the month, your first month will be billed at full rate, and your second month will be billed at pro-rota rate to minus the days you missed on the first month.
Simply fill in a contact form, and we will do the rest. An advisor will contact you to discuss your needs.
All employees have to clock in and clock out when they enter and leave the office. We can provide this record upon request.
You can use email or any of the IMs, Skype, MSN, Yahoo, AIM or ICQ for example. We also have an IP phone in the office. However, we recommend you have a digital paper trail of your conversations with your employee.
Depending on the skill set and the level of employee's experience the process usually takes 1 to 4 weeks. This can be more if you're putting a team together of highly experienced employees and depending what you put on your job order. For example if you wanted a data entry clerk or creative writer then we would have hundreds of applicants per week for this position. If you choose a level 4 programmer then we would expect to process 5-10 applicants per week before we give you qualified resumes.
The employee work a standard 40 hour work week. This is considered an "full-time dedicated" employee, who is exclusive to your tasks and in direct communication with you. This is the standard 40 hour work week.
We implement a very strict attendance policy wherein if your employee does not report for work for more than 3 days in a month, then your bill will be adjusted to reflect these days.
You are not required to pay for an employee that leaves without any prior notice. We would replace your employee at our expense and not yours. We also have strict contracts in place and we must stress that it is very rare that such a situation would arise.
Bank wire transfers
Any remittance company such as Western Union
Credit Cards
Paypal - as a last resort due to high costs.
Any remittance company such as Western Union
Credit Cards
Paypal - as a last resort due to high costs.
We are the legal employer offshore, so not tax, NI implications for you, you are essentially paying for a service. But our product is designed such that you have an employee working for you (it's like having an employee in UK working from home, but without the cost implications for an employer).
All our employees work from our office, we do not allow employees to work from home. We provide our employees with air conditioned offices, fully equipped with their own desk, computers, internet and peripherals.
If you require additional coverage for 24/7 you would simply add more virtual employees to your team that would do the later shift. Bearing in mind, we will only accommodate shifts for unsocial hours for teams of 2 or more virtual employees.
Having the expectation is very important. If you, the client can do something in 2 hours it doesn’t mean an offshore VA can do it in 2 hours. The client is a professional, experienced and know their stuff. A virtual staff is a “pawn” in a game of chess. Naturally their skill set will be much lower, hence the really low salaries. Moreover, with internet etc not being as advanced, there is a drawback of things taking slightly longer to get done.
We generally say to the client, whatever time it takes a local employee to do the work, realistically, add on about 30% more time.
We generally say to the client, whatever time it takes a local employee to do the work, realistically, add on about 30% more time.
Virtual Assistants are versatile to a certain extent. You can only give them task that are within their scope, e.g a admin VA can only be expected to do admin work, and not web development work or marketing work for instance.
VA’s are not multi skilled enterpreneurs, or experts or professionals, otherwise they would probably be running their own business. So it is important to give each VA a specific set of tasks within their skill set.
VA’s are not multi skilled enterpreneurs, or experts or professionals, otherwise they would probably be running their own business. So it is important to give each VA a specific set of tasks within their skill set.
It is important to have realistic expectations of a VA. They are not super humans or robots, and they will never be as good as oyu are in your job. Hence planning your time and deadlines realistically are important when assigning task. You should never overly rely on an offshore VA such that a contract is dependent on their work being delivered.
We try to be as reasonable and flexible with our clients as possible. Although all payments are required within the first week of each month, we understand sometimes things go wrong we work with you to accommodate your difficulties as much as possible.
VAs are generally happy to stay a little longer in the office to finish of their work before they leave, and you don’t pay extra for that. But if you are repeatedly needing extra time, then its something you need to discuss with your advisor and have the extra hours paid and agreed with your advisor.
Our service is rather like hiring your own employee, working directly for you, but from our offshore office. Whether you give your employee work or no work, it is important that they are paid. Naturally you want to ensure they are occupied with work all the time.
All VA’s are permanently assigned to our clients, although being employed by us, unless we have agreed in advance that it will be a short term temporary placement, such as for a data entry project.
As per our terms of agreement, clients are not allowed to circumvent MVP. Besides why would you want to hire a virtual staff outside of our agreement? You might as well hire any freelancer.
As per our terms of agreement, clients are not allowed to circumvent MVP. Besides why would you want to hire a virtual staff outside of our agreement? You might as well hire any freelancer.
We always agree on realistic time scales on getting you started before you sign the contracts with you. If there will be any kind of delay on our part due to shortage of candidates or something, we will keep you informed. We work with you as a partner, so there will always be communication from us, we help you along the way as much as we can.
No there is no such thing. If you hire 2 employees in your local office, you wouldn’t say to employee 2 “you are not getting paid”.
Of course we will work with you to remedy the under-performance of employee 2, and if required we will change this person for another virtual staff.
We’re generally quite accurate in selecting the most sutiable virtual staff for our clients, so this kind of discrepancy should be very minimal.
Of course we will work with you to remedy the under-performance of employee 2, and if required we will change this person for another virtual staff.
We’re generally quite accurate in selecting the most sutiable virtual staff for our clients, so this kind of discrepancy should be very minimal.
We try to help our clients as much as we can. If you need extra help from a more skilled VA, you can discuss this with your advisor and we will try and arrange a temporary placement for you, and you would simply pay for the temporary duration for the extra VA. We always have a pool of VA’s sitting on the “bench” waiting to be assigned to a client.
Yes all virtual staff communicates in English. They are not as fluent as us native guys, but they have good command in English language. They tend to be better in English writing than speaking. Everyone is degree educated; this is a minimum requirement for getting a job in MyVirutalPeople.
We generally find clients need a neutral accented virtual employee want to have a casual chat prior to committing. This is completely fine, and it can be arranged for you, we want you to be totally comfortable before moving forward.
We support our client anytime they need us. Your Advisors job is to ensure everything is working out for you, and ensure your virtual staff is working and delivering good work. So you would report to your Advisor with any difficulties you face.
Yes we provide all virtual staff with their own desk, computer, telephone line etc. so that they can work for you. They also have access to printers and scanners if required. There is no additional cost of the phone line, as long as it is incoming calls only. If you need them to make outgoing calls, the call cost would be added to your monthly invoice. Call rates are charged at local rates to your country. So if you are based in USA, your virtual staff will have a USA telephone number – making it affordable for you to call them, and also for your virtual staff to call any USA phone.
Yes absolutely. There is no additional cost of the phone line, as long as it is incoming calls only. If you need them to make outgoing calls, the call cost would be added to your monthly invoice. Call rates are charged at local rates to your country. So if you are based in USA, your virtual staff will have a USA telephone number – making it affordable for you to call the, and also for your virtual staff to call any USA phone.
No additional costs at all. Your invoice will be transparent. You simply pay the quote hourly rate multiplied by the hours worked per month, which usually tend to me 40 hours per week, 160 hours per month.
Sick rates are really low, which is a surprisingly good thing. People tend to be very serious about their work and dedicated, just not taking much sickleave unless absolutely necessary.
If a VA is off sick, the Team Leader or Line Manager will contact the client to inform them of the absence. You will also know of the absence as it will be important for you to be in the ‘know’ when its something related to a client on your books.
If a client has more than 1 VA, then the team mates inform the client directly.
If a client has more than 1 VA, then the team mates inform the client directly.
General VAs are hired the most, as the work set covers a wide spectrum of admin work – so pretty much any capable employee from any background can easily be trained into the role.
We have around 109 employees currently in the offshore office. Everyone works from the same office, nobody is allowed to work from home, we don’t hire freelancers, or sub contract to third party companies.
Our office is based in a town called Sylhet in Bangladesh. We are looking to expand into other town and setup office to help diversify our operational risk going forward. This will also help unlock newer talent pools and allow us to increase our offering to clients with higher calibre candidates.
Our office is based in a town called Sylhet in Bangladesh. We are looking to expand into other town and setup office to help diversify our operational risk going forward. This will also help unlock newer talent pools and allow us to increase our offering to clients with higher calibre candidates.
Client don’t get involved in the candidate selection process. I handle this for the client using my years of experience working with offshore guys. Im usually quite accurate, but I do make mistakes, say 1/10 times I might choose the wrong staff for the client.
As soon as we realise the staff is not capable to meet the client expectations we change the staff for someone more suitable, taking on board the shortcomings we discovered.
As soon as we realise the staff is not capable to meet the client expectations we change the staff for someone more suitable, taking on board the shortcomings we discovered.
Usually we can have a virtual staff started with the client within 2 weeks.
If we have a suitable candidate available on the BENCH (that is people working on internal projects waiting to be allocated to a client), then the time frame can be less than a week.
The minimum is usually around 1 week – as its take clients some time to digest the information, do the paperwork with me – whilst I prepare the virtual staff on my side.
If we have a suitable candidate available on the BENCH (that is people working on internal projects waiting to be allocated to a client), then the time frame can be less than a week.
The minimum is usually around 1 week – as its take clients some time to digest the information, do the paperwork with me – whilst I prepare the virtual staff on my side.
The guide will be essential in getting someone started on the job. With semi tech guys, they tend to understand technical products better than ‘purely admin guys’. You will also find that with time they become increasingly autonomous with their role, and able to learn the product quite well, which eventually enables them to think of potential solutions on the fly.
The best way to do this is to FORWARD your calls to the number on your virtual employees desk phone. This will be a local number so that you’re call forwarding costs staying absolutely minimal.
Yes, if you need your guys to have a desk phone to make any urgent calls to UK or USA this can be arranged. We can also give you a local phone number to be able to call them directly if required for any reason. E.g. if you are in UK, we can give you a UK number that routes directly to their deskphone, so its rather like making a local phone call for you.
Yes 5 hours ahead currently due to dalight savings, but usually 6 hours ahead.
Yes, every virtual staff would need to be hired on a full time basis, which is 8 hours per day and 5 days per week. The 5 days can be any consecutive 5 days, as we are also open weekends.
There are 3 shifts we run in the office to cover 24 hours.
Shift 1 – 9am-5pm UK time
Shift 2 – 5pm – 1am UK time
Shift 3 – 1am-9am UK time.
Your virtual staff will be working on one of these shifts depending on your requirement. Unfortunately staff cannot ‘overlap’ shifts, due ot the timing in the offshore office. E.g 5pm is late at night, which is the latest time someone can be expected to go home.
Shift 1 – 9am-5pm UK time
Shift 2 – 5pm – 1am UK time
Shift 3 – 1am-9am UK time.
Your virtual staff will be working on one of these shifts depending on your requirement. Unfortunately staff cannot ‘overlap’ shifts, due ot the timing in the offshore office. E.g 5pm is late at night, which is the latest time someone can be expected to go home.
Yes you will be sent a bespoke Holiday Calendar that we follow. This is fusion of some UK and Indian public holidays, to strike a fair balance for both clients and virtual staff.
If an agent is off sick, you will be informed as soon as we know, but we will also ensure there is cover assuming you have at least 2 full time guys. So in such a situation we will call the “other staff in your team to come into work and cover the sick person”.
If you have 1 full time person only its not possible to have cover, since every staff is working dedicated to his/her own client.
If you have 1 full time person only its not possible to have cover, since every staff is working dedicated to his/her own client.
Each virtual employee will work 8 hours per day, 5 days per week. So 40 hours a week is constitutes full time.
No VAT, or any ongoing costs on top of this. Your monthly invoice is simply for the monthly salary for each full time virtual employee that you hire.