A virtual assistant (VA) is a universal role that is provided to many businesses across the globe. However, at Officium, we do not like to use the term “VA”. We prefer the term “Offshore Operational Staff”

The staff that we provide, there is nothing “virtual” about them. They are real people with real skills, real dreams and aspirations.

A freelancer is an individual who works on a project basis, offering services or skills to clients on a temporary or contract basis without being bound to a long-term employment contract. Our OOS are our employees, ensuring that they have a continuous stream of income, saving you from being deserted.

Freelancers are self-employed and are not affiliated with any company or organisation, and they typically work remotely from their own workspace, providing their own equipment and resources to complete their work. As our staff are employed by us, we provide them with all of the equipment and resources, giving them the ability to work confidently from home.

Freelancers are responsible for finding their own clients, negotiating their rates, and managing their own projects and schedules. With our staff, we provide them with the clients, on a fixed rate basis and we support them in managing their projects and schedules, ensuring you get reliable staff.

Virtual assistants are normally freelancers that split their time between multiple clients. You receive a lack of dedication, communication, and security data risk. However, with Officium, you have staff that are dedicated, with great communication and no risk of data loss.

Officium’s services provide much more support for businesses than a typical virtual assistant. We have contingency plans in place for absences and annual leave. We provide multiple levels of communication to ensure your business always operates as usual. Your business continuity is valuable and we help you to protect that.

We manage the service jointly with our team in the Philippines. In the UK, we manage most of the client communication and the business as a whole. In the Philippines, our staff support you in delivering what you need, overseen by our Filipino management, who manage all of the Philippines operations.

Working in an Agile way, we provide you with daily standups, retrospectives, iterative action and much more. This ensures you get the most effective and efficient service.

However, the way in which you work with your Filipino staff is up to you. You are responsible for the day-to-day management of the staff you work with, allowing you to decide the frequency of updates, the best forms of communication and everything that comes with managing any staff member.

Once we have successfully navigated the 6-month consultancy period, we enter a “business as usual” (BAU) period, where your business’ automated components are tracked by Officium’s offshoring line management. One of our account managers will meet with you every two weeks to discuss a retrospective of the past two weeks. The goal is to provide an overview of your business’ current efficiency and to identify what went well, what could be done better and what change (if any) we are going to commit to working on. This approach with the client ensures constant improvement of service and built-in customer-centric quality.

Our staff apply to work with us. After which, they are personally interviewed in the Philippines by our operations management. During the interview process, they are assessed on their skills, their working attitude, their soft skills and much more. This allows us to select only the best candidates for you, making working with our staff enjoyable and easy.

We do more than just find a random assistant. We find you a new team member that cares about your business, almost as much as you.

Many businesses in the outsourcing space provide a commendable service and we are happy for those people who find a way to make their model work. Nevertheless, here are a few of the reasons why we stand out among the others:

• We are not a recruitment agency – we provide a stable working partnership
• We are not freelancers – We are contractually accountable.
• We are not new – We have decades of business experience.
• We are not combative – We are collaborative with our clients.
• We are not money focused – We focus on total value.
• We process map your business with you to standardise which components we are offshoring
• We have foundations both in the UK and in the Philippines.
• Our staff are directly employed by our subsidiary in the Philippines. 

We have experience in supporting clients in the following industries:

• Marketing and Advertising
• Information Technology
• Real estate
• Sales
• Many more to come!

For us, helping a business scale & seeing owners find that work and family balance is what brings us satisfaction.

The statement is simple: if you can do a task working from home on a laptop, you can outsource it.