7 Steps To Add A Virtual Assistant To Your Company Benefits Program

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Across the country, employers are increasingly becoming aware of the need to offer company benefits that help working parents feel less overwhelmed and better balance their personal lives and careers, whether that’s through on-site daycare, childcare stipends, or paid parental leave policies.

While paying for childcare outright may be too much of a financial burden for some small-to-mid-size companies, there are other services such as virtual family assistants that can also help parents — and all employees for that matter — manage their households and stay present at work. 

Virtual assistants can help with everything from researching summer camps to booking medical appointments. By freeing up the time and mental load associated with smaller administrative tasks, they can help parents focus on work when they’re at work and family time when they’re at home. 

So how do you approach your employer about including a virtual family assistant in their company benefits package? Keep reading to learn the 7 steps it takes to get your employer's attention about adding more company benefits.

Step 1: Don’t Wait

Too often we tie emotional baggage with a legitimate ask of our employer, even though the stand alone ask should be enough. I’ve seen numerous friends and employees wait until they’re pregnant to ask for the raise they’ve been wanting (and deserving) for the last 6 months. You don't need to wait until you’re overwhelmed by parenthood to ask your company if they’d be willing to provide a stipend for a virtual assistant that can help relieve the mental load at home.

I recommend starting these conversations about company benefits now with your direct supervisor, on behalf of all current and future families in the workplace. But if you’re going to make the ask now, you’ll need to have a grasp on just how much this extra assistance for caregivers is needed…

Step 2: Know the Stats

Understanding the broader context of how balancing work and homelife can affect employees’ mental health and productivity will allow you to better frame your request to your employer. (Plus, it might also help you realize how common the stress you’re feeling is!) Nearly three-quarters (73%) of workers are caregivers, according to a study by Harvard Business School. Being a caregiver encompasses more than just childcare, it also includes employees who take care of their own aging parents, and face many of the same struggles that working parents do. 

“There's not enough care for sick elderly people, and a lot of employees are getting pulled out of the workplace because of those caregiving responsibilities,” says Ellie Windle, founder of household management app Persist, who has worked with company benefits programs. “That's kind of upped the ante because it encompasses such a bigger chunk of employees.” 

With that in mind, here are three ways being a caregiver can affect employees and the companies they work for:

1. Productivity: The majority (80%) of workers with caregiving responsibilities say it reduces their productivity and affects their ability to perform their best at work all the time (33%), most of the time (14%), and sometimes (36%). Known as “presenteeism,” it occurs when an employee is physically showing up but is distracted or trying to multitask the whole time in order to balance caregiving responsibilities with work, like having to sit on hold with the pediatrician, which is only open during work hours. This was especially the case for those higher up, with 88% saying caregiving regularly interfered with their ability to perform their best at work. 

2. Turnover: The same Harvard Business School study found that one-third of employees say they’ve chosen to leave a job due to caregiving responsibilities. Again, they found that the most experienced, highest-paid employees were most likely to leave due to “irreconcilable tensions between the requirements of work and home.” Both the costs of replacing high-level employees and reduced productivity can be quite expensive for a company.

3. Mental Health: A survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 60% of employees say they struggle with balancing work and caregiving responsibilities. Employees cited feeling stressed and overwhelmed, not having enough time with their loved ones, and feeling a financial strain as the most common challenges associated with being a working caregiver. 

Adding a virtual assistant for families to a company benefits package can help address all three of the issues highlighted above by taking some caregiving tasks off of busy working parents’ plates. 

Step 3: Research The Options

You’ll want to be familiar with the virtual family assistant options out there, so you can mention a specific company to your employer as a starting point. Oh, hey! We’ve done this step for you. Check out our blog post on the Best Virtual Assistants for Families to see the options we recommend and how they work.

Once you know what is out there, it’s a good idea to test one of the virtual assistant options before approaching your employer about making it part of their company benefits. Ashley Chang, the founder of Sundays, says in a few instances she’s helped parents who have been using the app develop a case study for how it’s helped them better manage their time. 

“Getting [an employee’s] time back is probably more valuable than hiring another person on their team. If they can have their best employees be at their best while they're focused on work, I think they're going to see really big returns on that,” Chang says. “We've been able to really support high-trajectory, mid-career parents — like someone who is in their early 30s maybe they just got a director position, and they have a family, and so we are helping them to continue on that path and be able to make a big impact for the business.”

As the inclusion of virtual assistants in company benefits packages continue to become more common, it could be worth asking colleagues and acquaintances in your industry about their company benefits and if they include a virtual assistant. If companies in your field are offering this benefit, make sure to mention this when you make the pitch to your employer. For example, if you work in private education, you could highlight this case study of a New York high school English teacher who outlines how having a virtual assistant made her less stressed and more productive at work since she no longer had to take time out of the day for personal admin work, such as sitting on hold for a health insurance claim. 

Step 4: Find The Right Contact At Your Company 

Next, you want to find the right person at your company to talk to about adding a virtual assistant to the company benefits package. In some cases, that may mean going directly to human resources. Big corporations also often have Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that are dedicated to different topics, such as an ERG for parents or moms returning to work, which would be a good place to start. 

Ellie Windle with Persist recommends asking yourself: Who is the champion at your organization? Who fights for this? “What's been interesting, is that most times I say that they're like, ‘Oh, that's Jennifer.’ There's typically one evangelist inside a company,” she says. 

Step 5: Make The Request

Now that you’ve done your research it’s time to actually make the pitch! 

“Do it in writing, not as a complaint in the hallway,” says Michelle Swaney, founder of The Potty School, who has worked with company benefits programs.

Below is a sample pitch to help get you started...

Step 6: Follow Up & Gather Support 

The more people that request something or raise a concern, the more likely it will be considered. Gathering support could be as simple as talking to your colleagues, particularly those who are part of relevant ERGs, if your company has them. 

If the person you reached out to at your company seems interested, but hasn’t committed yet, you could reach out to the virtual assistant company you’re most interested in to get their contact for corporate partnerships and their company benefits pitch deck (if they’re willing to share it with you). Forward those along to your employer. 

If they’re still not ready to make the investment, you could ask your employer if they’d be willing to send out a survey to gauge interest. 

Step 7: Brainstorm Other Time-Saving Company Benefits

This article was focused on virtual family assistants, but the same process can be used to ask your employer for other company benefits that support you as a parent, such as childcare, potty training, and nanny stipends. We’ll have an upcoming blog post on all of our favorite company benefits for parents so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive our latest articles in your inbox. 

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