Amsterdam Schiphol airport; 810am local time. I get off KLM flight for a stop over en-route to State side. Open the cell phone- and there is a VM/text from our friend Gregg Mazza.
Andy: do you think you can write an article about Virtual Assistant and its impact in the Senior Home care industry, given your experience?
I text back- “Gregg- your text is very timely. I was thinking about that. Let’s catch up once I land”. Long story short- here we are talking about Virtual Assistants.
What is Virtual Assistant:
Now a days when folks don’t know something, they ask ChatGPT. So, I asked Chat GPT “What is Virtual Assistant”?
Chat GPT gave the following response-
A virtual assistant (VA) is a software or digital tool designed to help users manage tasks, answer questions, and provide support. Virtual assistants can be either AI-powered or human-based. The AI-driven virtual assistants, like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa, are designed to interact with users through voice or text, providing services such as setting reminders, sending messages, managing calendars, playing music, or providing information from the internet. On the other hand, Human Virtual Assistants (“HVAs”) work remotely to perform administrative tasks for businesses or individuals. These tasks might include managing emails, scheduling appointments, data entry, customer service, or social media management.
Now thinking about it, the Human Virtual Assistants(“HVAs”) have been around since 1980’s, (while AI driven VA’s are more recent phenomenon) but Senior Home care industry has started warming up to this HVA concept only in recent years. As an industry, Senior Home care really started getting organized in late 90’s and so entrepreneurs who got into the industry had enough onshore staff to help them. But as the industry is maturing, it has become difficult to attract and retain onshore talents to do the administration chores on the lower end of the value chain.
Besides margin pressures coming from the following continue to drive utilization of HVA’s:
- Seniors are asking for more affordable Home care given their lower overall savings and higher cost of living and Home care companies have to reduce their overhead
- Regulations mandate higher payout to caregivers and thus lower office overheads;
- Competitive landscape is requiring companies to minimize response time and accommodate round-the-clock coverage
Furthermore, technological advances in communication, workspace sharing and connectivity have paved the way for virtual assistants, making it a key profit differentiator.
Recently, companies have been hiring or exploring hiring HVA’s to augment their staffing for a similar variety of their needs. HVA’s tend to come in 5 categories.
Category 1: Secretarial: HVAs hired for secretarial needs do not need a lot of skills- other than being able to understand, speak and articulate English, being “somewhat” computer savvy to manage calendars, book travel, and do expenses etc.
Category 2: Recruiting assistance and On-call management: HVA’s recruited for these kinds of roles need to have basic skills in recruitment or call management and need to have proficiency in basic computer skill sets, such as calendars, recruitment tools, Microsoft suite etc.
Category 3: Full cycle recruitment and/or Client care scheduling management: HVA’s recruited for these kinds of roles, need to have advanced skills in recruitment, HR management, and scheduling management. They need to have better cognitive and interpersonal skills.
Category 4: Administration roles: HVA’s in these roles need not require as much customer-facing inter-personal skills but may require a higher level of administrative and analytical skills such as managing accounts receivable, or billing or collection management etc.
Category 5: Digital Marketing: For smaller businesses who want to leverage the prospects offered by digital marketing, SEO and PPC, it becomes a burdensome cost to hire an in-house full-time expert. It is financially befitting to outsource this role to an IT expert, who designs marketing campaigns at a fraction of the cost.
Why Human Virtual Assistant’s
Pre-dominant reasoning behind hiring HVA’s in the US have been:
- Replenish local talent pool
- Reduce hiring, training, retention and overall employee cost base
- Being able to risk-manage one’s office more efficiently
- Renewed focus on core business services and expansionary endeavors.
- Improved work-life balance and increased productivity.
Who provides HVA’s
There are different companies across various geographic locations that provide these kinds of services. Companies located in far east like India and Philippines can cover On Call hours better as that’s their regular day time hours in those locations. Besides they cover a wider array of hours to cover caregiver recruitment requirements.
- Companies located in Mexico, can provide real time support but on call resources will have similar time zone problems- albeit cost will be cheaper.
- Companies like Olivia provide HVA’s where a company has to interview, hire, train and manage HVA’s.
- Companies like VCCM provide more streamlined HVA’s where one can hire VCCM to deploy HVA’s with existing functional expertise (such as scheduling HR etc.) and back it up when the HVA is unavailable for any reason.
Where and when to use HVA’s
Most companies start exploring HVA’s when they face increased scarcity of local onshore talents or they see burn on out of on shore personnel. Usually, it makes sense for companies to start creating options for HVA’s before they come across talent scarcity of burn out of existing staff.
Having this HVA option already figured out, gives companies ability to scale as and when needed in best case, or in normal case, ability to continue operations in the face of imminent staff shortage.
Infrastructure needed for HVA’s
To deploy HVA’s, one would need to establish certain technological infrastructure such as having a VOIP phone system, a Cloud based computing system/server or operating system and people in office capable of coordinating and managing HVA’s. It is important to have people onshore to front the clients while letting the HVA’s manage the actual execution to achieve operational objectives.
Best Practices around HVA’s
Best practices around hiring HVA’s depend on the actual business objective. If the objective is to help secretarial tasks, then hiring an individual HVA is the most cost effective route as training requirement is minimal and an unscheduled HVA departure does not create a huge operational gap or risk.
However, if a company wants to use HVA’s for an actual functional role such as Scheduling management or caregiver recruitment, then a well thought out plan is very important.
Hiring a turnkey HVA company is usually a better route in this case as then the offshore company can deploy trained HVA’s, manage any down side risk of an HVA departure, training of new HVA’s and their deployment.
This limits operational risk of the hiring company. Besides the turnkey HVA provider may bring in other functional best practices to the hiring company and benefit its operations for long term.
Disadvantages in employing HVA’s
While hiring HVA’s one needs to be aware of various disadvantages they represent.
- Low reliability and accountability when no oversight is present.
- Workplace disconnect in case HVA is working from home.
- Limited infrastructure (slow internet, connectivity) available to HVA, in case HVA is operating on his/her own
- Lack of motivation for HVA to perform, anticipating limited career growth.
- Issues with payments and logistics when dealing with individual HVA’s.
- Working with freelancers directly instead of working through an established agency or provider with supervision of an account manager
Most if not all these disadvantages can be mitigated by working with a professional HVA provider that offers structured services, reliable infrastructure, and robust oversight mechanisms.
The Future of Human Virtual Assistants in Senior Home Care
The adoption of HVAs in the senior home care industry has been transformative for many businesses, helping them adapt to labor shortages, improve efficiency, and reduce operational costs. As the demand for home care services continues to grow, leveraging HVAs is not just a trend— it’s a necessity for staying competitive in an increasingly challenging marketplace. If you’re a senior home care business owner considering the use of HVAs, it’s crucial to develop a clear plan for implementation. Start by identifying your operational bottlenecks and consider which roles HVAs could fulfill to alleviate the burden on your onshore team. By adopting a strategic approach, you can not only enhance your business operations but also improve the quality of care delivered to your clients.
Free Resource – “The Ultimate Guide to Hiring and Managing Human Virtual Assistants in Home Care”
To help you take the next step, we’ve created “The Ultimate Guide to Hiring and Managing Human Virtual Assistants in Home Care.” This free resource will walk you through:
- How to identify tasks and roles best suited for HVAs in the home care industry.
- Key questions to ask HVA providers before hiring.
- A checklist for setting up the right infrastructure for seamless HVA integration.
- Best practices for managing and retaining HVAs to ensure productivity and accountability.
- Case studies from home care businesses that have successfully leveraged HVAs to grow and scale.
This guide is packed with actionable insights to help you make informed decisions and avoid common pitfalls. Whether you’re new to the concept of HVAs or already exploring your options, this resource will give you the clarity and confidence to move forward.
How to Get the Guide:
Click HERE to download “The Ultimate Guide to Hiring and Managing Human Virtual Assistants in Home Care” for free and take the first step toward transforming your business operations with HVAs.
By partnering with the right HVA provider and using a strategic approach, you can unlock new opportunities for growth, improve efficiency, and focus on delivering exceptional care to your clients. Let HVAs handle the back-office work so you can focus on what truly matters— growing your business and enhancing the lives of those you serve.
