The Silicon Valley Business Journal reports that the cost of employee benefits is up to 44% of total payroll costs.
This fact is important for home based virtual assistants and others who charge for their services to recognize. Tonya Thomas’ website Small Office Assistant has a good discussion of this issue when it discusses why virtual assistants can charge $30 to $70 per billable hour. The more the cost of benefits increases, the more sense this makes to potential clients… and the more careful you must be to provide your own “benefits”.
Now wait — you said that working with a VA isn’t more expensive than hiring an employee, but I wouldn’t pay an employee $30 per hour!
Not in straight time, perhaps. You’re more likely to pay someone with this level of skills between $17 and $20 per hour if they were sitting in your office. However, when you add in the cost of administering payroll, your share of payroll taxes, having to pay certain kinds of insurance like worker’s compensation and extra liability for having someone in your home or place of business, and the cost of making sure that your location conforms to federal guidelines such as OSHA, you absolutely *do* pay that much per hour. And the more skilled and talented a worker, the more her time is worth, and the higher her fee.
The beauty is this. While you still have the expense, you have absolutely *none* of the hassle. One check per month. Simple. Easy. You can get on with the business of living your life on your terms. Working in partnership with a great VA makes that all possible.
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