Line of Business
Firms using "virtual" office assistants worldwide to get the job done
As the economic downturn leads to more layoffs, companies are using the services of virtual office assistants -- who reside overseas, but will help you with pretty much anything that can be done online. At the same time, more workers are signing on to the services in hopes of finding their next pay cheque.2/6/2009 6:00:00 AM By: Brian Jackson
When Darlene Lee found herself overburdened with menial tasks -- with an unhelpful admin assistant in her employ -- she sought out her saviour in Jerusalem, Israel.
But it's not what you think.
A vice-president at a New York-based consultancy, Experian Research Services, at the time, Lee didn't pray for her work to get done by divine intervention – she used the services of a virtual outsourcing company based in Jerusalem. GlobeTask took on many of the chores that the expert in strategic initiatives just didn't have the time or resources to complete.
“I had an admin assistant that wasn't doing a very good job and wasn't working fast enough,” Lee recalls. “To take on other projects, I needed to find other resources.”
So she started e-mailing out work for the GlobeTask team to do – PowerPoint presentations, online research requests, weekly reports on Web traffic, and a laundry list of various tasks she used to rely on her in-office administrative assistant to perform. She was soon able to offer her employee to someone else in the department and rely on GlobeTask for her daily workflow.
“Pretty much anything that could be done online or via e-mail, I farmed out to them,” Lee recalls. “There's an efficiency that's not possible in most physical offices.”
Lee isn't the only professional to make use of virtual outsourcing services, and GlobeTask isn't the only company to off it.
As the global economic downturn sparks staff cuts at many organizations, sites that allow you to instantly outsource work cheaply are booming.
Page Navigation 1) "There's an efficiency that's not possible in most physical offices." - Page 12) There are more than 23,000 freelancers offering programming and database development skills. - Page 2
3) "All of the people I talked to were native English speakers." - Page 3
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