Do you make the VA work your hours or theirs?

Question

Nearly signed for a seat and then realized I hadn't thought about the clock at all. The agency offers either overlap with my business day, which for their side is overnight, or their own daytime hours with async handoffs to me.

Overlap means I can ping them and get an answer, and any call work happens when sellers actually pick up. It also means they're on a night shift, and the agency was upfront that people burn out of those faster and cost more.

Their hours means better retention and a lower rate, and my morning starts with a finished report. Anything I need clarified takes a day to round trip, and live calling is basically off the table.

I want the version that keeps working when I stop paying attention to it, so I genuinely can't tell which of these that is.

gregpowell66 · Answer

Partial. Three hours of overlap covers every question that actually needs answering same day, and the rest of their shift is heads down work with nobody interrupting them. On job sites the same pattern holds, the crew gets more done in the block where I'm not standing there talking to them.

aaron_fitz10 · Answer

@verity if the seat calls sellers, the schedule isn't a preference, it's determined by when people answer their phones. Everything else can be async. I'd split the roles before I split the clock, because I spent four months trying to make one person do both and got a tired person doing two jobs badly.

Do you make the VA work your hours or theirs?

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