One text can throw your work life into chaos: Tom has quit. He said it’s a mental health issue, and he’s not fulfilling a two-week notice.  

Tom left no notes on where he stood in communications with clients or with his billing duties. Your “to-do” list is already stacked, but now you must also do Tom’s job. 

This goes on for days or weeks until you fill Tom’s spot and bring that person up to speed. He spoke of his mental health, but now you feel you’re slipping. The stress steamrolls beyond work hours and comes out at home. The family tiptoes around you. The laughs are less frequent. 

Work demands all of your focus, and you operate with an attention deficit for the loves of your life: family, free time, outings with friends, the new hobby now on hold. 

You search for quality help, for someone who can handle what Tom managed. It’s tough to match all the duties you need with the pay you can offer.  

But what if you could hire three qualified people for the cost of one Tom? Imagine a team tackling those duties, not just one stressed person. Tom was an office worker. He didn’t travel for you. He didn’t leave the office except to pick up the occasional lunch at Applebees’ a block down the street. 

If you consider office work in quotes, as in “office work,” you can manage all of Tom’s duties and more by leveraging a lower cost of living abroad and hiring three employees. 

It’s the “Team vs. Tom” concept. If you can hire a staff of three to fill a position, rather than just a one-for-one replacement, you can avoid that nightmare, The “I quit” text that throws everything into turmoil. It’s a type of workforce insurance. If Amber is out, then Jonah and Cadence are there to handle her duties. 

But it’s much more than that: 

• Specialization: You cross-train all three on each of the role’s duties so that they serve as backups to each other, but you can also select the best candidate for each specific role based on their specialized skills and experiences. Doing this ensures each role is filled by someone highly skilled in that area.

• Scalability: Three people can handle more daily tasks than one, so the duties can be expanded beyond what you initially budgeted for one in-office position.

• Greater problem-solving ability: A collaborative team leads to a broader range of ideas and better problem-solving.

• Flexibility: You can have staff available during a broader portion of the day if you choose to stagger shifts.

• Quicker turnaround: With three people available to tackle the workflow, projects can be completed in less time.

• Eliminate office overhead: You can avoid the costs of maintaining office space, such as rent, utilities, maintenance, and office supplies.

• Lower HR costs: Virtual employees hired through HireSmart are provided health and dental benefits at no cost to clients, who also don’t deal with the headaches of administering those benefits.

At HireSmart, we’ve worked setting up clients with teams of highly vetted virtual employees from the Philippines for years. Our hiring process is exhaustive, and we only take the best, with just one percent of applicants ever meeting a client. We have a 98.7 percent successful placement rate, the best in the business.  

We employ fabulous virtual employees, and I enjoy my daily interactions with productive people with great attitudes. That’s exactly what we create for our clients. If a virtual employee isn’t qualified enough to work for me, they’re not working for you.  

If you’ve been hit by the nightmare “I quit” text that left you in a bind for weeks, maybe you’d like to consider a team instead of a Tom when filling that position. There’s more stability in that approach, and the upside is impressive.   

If you want to hear more about this leveraging approach, click to schedule a free consult with me. I’d love to chat.