I got this email that I asked my OFS, Julia, to respond to.
I know you are presenting work from home jobs. We were also approached by a firm who provides a nice office space and handles IT infrastructure, electricity, and some supervision. Can you speak to pros and cons of each model, with experience?
She wrote this really long, great response. The problem is it’s too long to put in a newsletter. So I decided to break down her response into 2 parts. In this newsletter, I’ll talk about the pros and cons of an agency. I hired from an agency in 2005 when I first started. As soon as there were other options, I’ve never gone back to an agency.
In the next email, I’ll talk about why hiring an OFS is much better than hiring your workers through a VA agency.
As you read this, consider that I’m obviously biased. I hired from agencies in the beginning. Then I built what I consider a better way to hire people (OnlineJobs.ph).
There’s bias in everything.
Here are the pros of getting a VA through an agency.
– They have an office space with the equipment, electricity, internet, and everything a VA would need. That’s great if your workers don’t have those things at home. Most do.
– They manage your people for you (sort-of), but I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing because what if they’re management people suck. Sure, you save time not communicating with your outsource team, but is it worth it if they change workers every few weeks? I almost lost an amazing worker once because of the agency management.
– They can guarantee your VA sits at a desk 8 hours/day. Sitting does not mean productive.
– They can do the training for you. But…are you sure the training they’re giving works for your business? Does the agency understand your business?
– If you need a big team immediately, an agency will get that. It’ll cost more, but if you can afford it, why not?
– They can hire someone for you without you needing to do anything. Great.
– They can help your outsourced workers with taxes and benefits like SSS, Pag-ibig, etc. That is if they hire these workers directly and not as independent contractors. Because if they’re just going to end up as independent contractors, they might as well just work for you.
The cons of hiring through an agency are:
– They’re hiring people who are best for their business, not yours. You know what kind of people you need, the skills and personality they should have. Unless that agency knows your business really, really well, this is unlikely. And…while it may seem that their incentive is to hire someone best for your business, oddly it’s not.
– You don’t have complete control over your team. There’s always a middleman. Or multiple middlemen. This adds a barrier to the communication process, and it takes longer for your instructions to get to them.
– It’s more expensive because you’re not just paying for your worker’s salaries; you’re paying for company overhead. If you’re just getting a small team, most of what you pay goes to that overhead, not your workers’ salaries. The typical markup is 3x the salary being paid to the worker. (ie, you’re paying them $1500/month, they’re paying the VA $500/month)
– Your workers will have to commute to work. Considering they’re already paid less than their work-from-home counterparts, that just doesn’t seem fair.
I don’t have any people working for me that I hired through an agency right now and never will again. The downsides of hiring through an agency, no matter how easy they make the initial hiring, are not worth it for me.
Plus, it’s just so darn easy to find amazing people on your own at OnlineJobs.ph
John