The ever-changing VA skill set
blueumbrella has just celebrated its 21st birthday, an amazing business milestone. When the company was launched in 2001, technology was very different and seems primitive in comparison to what we take for granted today. This means that, over the past two decades, the role of a VA has undergone changes in line with the development of new technologies.
The skill set needed in the early 2000s
At the turn of the 21st century, the internet was very new. If you had an office job, you had to be based in the office because there were no other options. Home internet was restricted to dial-up modems, which meant the internet was slow and you couldn’t be online at the same time as making a phone call. Mobile phones with texting facilities had become popular, but it was expensive to make a phone call on them. Smartphones didn’t come into popular use before the popularity of the BlackBerry in the mid-2000s, so accessing emails on the move was something you could only really achieve by going to an internet café.
When blueumbrella began, VAs dealt mainly with diary management and putting together PowerPoint presentations for their clients. As the internet became faster and more effective, VAs were able to take on email management, increasing the range of work it was possible to do. Many of our VAs help their clients with bookkeeping work, and the gradual digitalisation of the process over the years has required them to learn additional skills in accounting software.
Then the world discovered social media! Facebook launched in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. LinkedIn had been launched in 2003; initially it was just used as a professional networking and jobs board before evolving into a social media platform. Many of our clients now ask their VAs to manage their social media accounts - a skill that our younger VAs seem to have been born with anyway!
Recent developments in VA skill sets
Now that the world is comfortable with the concept of remote working, the VA skill set is adapting again. People have become much more confident with cloud technology and are creating centralised ‘co-working’ documents, which enables teams to work together on the same document, rather than having to pass it back and forth to make comments and changes.
Different companies use and sometimes create their own online applications. This means that VAs need to learn how to use them, and VAs working for a number of clients need to have the ability to quickly adapt to using different systems.
One interesting development is that as a result of the pandemic lockdowns, our clients adapted to online meetings, and we got a lot more of them asking their VAs to take minutes. Going to ‘real life’ meetings was not a service clients felt the need to ask their VA to do, but on a Zoom call, they found it hard to take the notes at the same time as leading the meeting. Even now the lockdowns are (hopefully) over, many clients are continuing to hold online meetings and ask their VAs to take minutes. Other clients are doing things slightly differently by recording their virtual meetings. They then send the recordings to their VAs and ask them to transcribe or summarise what happened.
blueumbrella VAs have also reported that their clients are asking them to organise mentoring meetings and catch-ups within their teams and with different departments. Others are being asked to do more research on suppliers and systems to make sure they’re working with ethical companies and products.
Many of our VAs and their clients are phoning and emailing each other less in favour of video calls via WhatsApp (other communication apps are available). In the year 2001, this technology seemed so futuristic it was almost science fiction!
Our VAs are always willing to learn new skills
We understand that every client has different needs, and this is why we’ll always try to find someone who has the skills to be able to help. And even if our VAs don’t have the skills now, they will always be willing to learn.