What is the importance of hiring Virtual Assistants with diverse backgrounds?

Diversity of any kind is an integral factor in deciding a company’s growth and success. Diversity refers to including people belonging to different cultural, social or ethnic backgrounds, as well as not discriminating anyone on the basis of gender. As times are progressing, businesses are getting more inclusive, and people too are becoming more accepting of this change and moving past these petty discriminations. It has been observed that companies that have a diverse workforce, capture more markets as there are many people pooling in different ideas which helps drive innovation.

As per the World Economic Forum, a study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that companies with a more diverse management yield 19% higher revenues which springs from innovation. In my opinion, however, diversity should not be restricted to the management only but should be spread around the entire company in order to reap maximum benefits in the future. Therefore, companies should make a conscious effort to achieve diversity.

Virtual Assistants are individuals who offer professional help to businesses, referred to as clients and they typically work from home and not from the client’s office. They offer services in areas like blog writing, graphic designing, marketing, managing email accounts, bookkeeping etc. Virtual assistants have been of great help for businesses especially during the pandemic as people were already working from home, and the acceptance of the work from home model has given a boost to the demand for virtual assistants. They have been of extreme help to small businesses during these trying times and the trend of hiring virtual assistants seems to remain on a rise in the times to come too.

Now that we have touched upon the basic idea behind diversity and virtual assistants, let’s take a look at how the fusion of these two concepts i.e., hiring virtual assistants from diverse backgrounds can be of importance to businesses.

Increased productivity and creativity:

When virtual assistants come from different backgrounds, they bring different experiences to the table, varying perspectives and newer ideas which can benefit the company in the long run. Everyone with different skills, experiences and perspectives teaming up together increases the chances of a workplace being more productive. Similarly, if problems arise, the differing experiences and perspectives of people increases the chances of coming up with better solutions for the potential problem too.

Increased trust

As the world is becoming more connected and more globalized, it is of utmost importance for businesses to be culturally sensitive and more understanding about the varying needs of consumers, in this case, clients, worldwide. A virtual assistant who would have the knowledge of a foreign client’s culture or language can be a great asset, as the client would feel more respected. This will also help in developing a bond of trust amongst the two parties.

Better reputation:

Companies that hire diverse virtual assistants are more likely to be preferred over other companies and are also perceived to be better employers. It gives off a more inclusive and accepting image of the company and that can, in turn, lead to an increase in the clientele too.

Diverse skillset

Professional diversity is just as important for determining a company’s success as other forms of diversities. A company consists of different departments, and for a smooth sailing of the company it is important for all those departments to work in coherence and at their best for the company to be successful as a whole. A virtual assistant from a marketing background can offer services to the marketing department of a company, one with an accounting background can offer services related to accounting and so on. Hiring smart virtual assistants from all professional backgrounds will increase the chances of a company’s success without significantly increasing the costs.

Companies are not always deliberate in being biased towards a certain culture, race or gender, but they should realize these unconscious biases can lead to unconscious inclusions which can harm the company in more ways than one. Therefore, companies should be mindful of these little details when hiring as they can go a long way in determining their success and filling any possible gaps that might exist within them. Diversity can reap great financial and non-financial benefits to businesses, and being able to achieve it with a much lower cost with the help of virtual assistants in today’s day and age is definitely a win win.