Not everyone wants to spend their 9-to-5 at a standard desk job, stuck in a cubicle all day.

For those with children, the traditional corporate life may be strenuous.

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Between school pickups and the cost of a babysitter, parents often find themselves quitting their job to stay at home.

However, losing an income is hard and many parents still want to work but can’t swing a strict schedule.

Working as a virtual assistant is a modern solution for career-driven individuals who need to balance work and family life.

What Does a Virtual Assistant (VA) do?

Virtual assistants tackle work tasks including:

• Managing social media accounts
• Handling customer invoices
• Providing customer support by phone or email
• Scheduling appointments

Why might a company seek a virtual assistant?

Smaller companies may wish to cut costs by minimizing physical office space and having as many employees as possible work from home.

Other organizations need employees in a country where they have yet to establish physical headquarters.

Thanks to the rapid growth of technology and increasing internet speeds, employers can set up a remote workforce almost anywhere in the world.

Here are five of the benefits for parents working as virtual assistants.

1. Flexibility

Flexibility is one of the top reasons employees work from home.

Being able to set your own hours and decide how much you can handle gives you the freedom to control your schedule.

You can drive your kids to school and pick them up last minute if someone gets sick.

You can work from the corner coffee shop or even from your bed.

Best of all, there’s no need to save up sick days or vacation time before taking off. Just let your employer know and go!

The flexibility of working remotely also lets you juggle multiple projects at once.

If you work remotely for multiple companies or tackle your own freelance projects on the clock, no one will yell at you for tackling work for different employers at once.

2. Control and Job Fulfillment

Do what you love, and love what you do.

For work-at-home employees, it’s not just a slogan on a coffee mug.

You can do work you enjoy, spend time with your family, and even have time for housework or starting a side hustle.

When work is slow, you can work on a side project instead of aimlessly staring at a cubicle wall.

You have the power to accept and decline assignments based on your interests, which lets you work in fields you enjoy.

Whether you prefer corporate giants or small nonprofits, lots of businesses need virtual assistants.

If the project is small enough, say only a few days a week, you can take on work with multiple companies to create a full-time schedule.

3. Continuous Learning

Parents who take a few years off from the workforce to raise their children quickly find that when it’s time to find a new job those missing years make a big difference.

Not only can a gap in your resume be a red flag to employers, but it also means your skills can get rusty from lack of use.

With the rapid change of technology, it’s vital to stay up-to-date on changes in the field.

First-hand experience is the best teacher.

Working as a virtual assistant fills that resume gap and lets you continue learning every day.

In addition to project-based learning, you can improve your skills with various software programs or study for useful certifications in your field.

Even more crucial, your job will let you practice your soft skills, such as communication, sales, and professionalism.

Soft skills are arguably one of the most valuable yet underrated employee qualifications.

4. Save Money

Work may earn you a paycheck, but no one mentions the cost of working.

Traditional employees spend hundreds, even thousands, a month on transportation, childcare, and all those fancy after-work cocktails with coworkers.

UrbanSitter found the average hourly cost of a babysitter in 2019 ranged from $17 to $21, depending on the number of children!

Too often working parents find that one spouse’s entire salary goes solely to childcare.

By nixing the need for a sitter and drastically reducing other work-related expenses (good-bye expensive suits!), you can stretch your income further.

Plus work-at-home jobs give you the flexibility to change or accept different assignments that pay the best.

It’s like an instant raise you can give yourself!

5. Work-Life Balance

While it can be tricky at first to transition from work to home mindset, if you set a specific schedule for work hours you’ll get more done while having more free time.

With no long commute to slow you down, you can go from work to family dinner in five minutes.

While everyone else is fighting traffic, you can take thirty minutes to decompress and re-energize for the evening.

What Does It Take to Work Remotely?

Of course, it’s important to be tech-savvy if you want to work remotely.

Virtual assistants should be familiar with the idea of connecting remotely to a computer and should understand how the cloud works.

Much of your work will be accessed and saved in the cloud, so understanding how to use it is a necessary skill.

Business owners and remote workers alike need to learn about new ways of doing business – from accessing and sharing to security features.

To succeed as a remote worker, you’ll also want to be self-disciplined, work well on your own, and have good multitasking skills.

Without a manager checking on your progress in-person, it can be easy to give in to distractions.

A virtual job is still a job.

For those who can balance the requirements of remote work, however, you will reap the rewards of a flexible schedule, more control over your career path, and extra time with your family.

You too can join the ranks of happy parents who have found their calling as virtual assistants.

Ashley Wilson is working remotely as a content creator, writing mostly about business and tech. She has been known to reference Harry Potter quotes in casual conversation and enjoys baking homemade treats for her husband and their two felines, Lady and Gaga. You can get in touch with Ashley via Twitter.