Virtual Assistants as Project Managers: When and How It Works

Remote work and virtual assistants (VAs) have transformed modern businesses. Today’s entrepreneurs and executives can delegate not just routine admin tasks but even project management work to skilled remote staff. By leveraging remote staffing solutions, companies can scale with remote teams and free up executive time. In this post, we’ll explore how VAs can serve as project managers – when it makes sense, what tools and processes are involved, and how AI fits into the mix.

Why Virtual Assistants are Booming in Business

The virtual assistant industry has exploded in recent years. According to market research, global VA services were a $4.12 billion market in 2020 and are growing at ~25% annually. By 2028 the VA market is projected to reach nearly $16 billion. This surge is driven by the rise of remote work, improved cloud tools, and the need to cut costs while staying agile. In fact, surveys show that even large companies (over 1,000 employees) are increasingly hiring virtual staff.

VAs are used across industries: entrepreneurs account for 28% of VA clients, with others in consulting, coaching, marketing, tech, real estate and more. As a startup founder or CEO, you’re not alone in tapping a VA. Common VA-supported tasks range from scheduling and content creation to social media and customer support (see “top tasks” below). By delegating these duties, business owners reclaim hours for strategic work. For example, one survey found 67% of VA clients hired them “to save time” and 53% “to delegate tasks”.

Figure: Entrepreneurs and executives now use virtual assistants to handle everything from admin tasks to project coordination. (Image: Pexels)

Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant

VAs offer many cost and productivity advantages for busy leaders. Some key benefits include:

• Saving Time (and Money). By offloading routine admin, you recover potentially hundreds of hours per year. In one LinkedIn survey, business owners reported wasting over 300 hours annually on admin tasks. Handing these to a VA yields massive time ROI. Financially, outsourcing can be far cheaper than a full-time hire: you pay only for needed hours or tasks, with no office or benefit costs. Indeed, studies show businesses save up to ~78% of operating costs by using remote assistants.
  
  
• Access to Specialized Skills. Many VAs specialize in niche areas (social media management, bookkeeping, content marketing, etc.). You gain that expertise without hiring a new in-house role. This is especially helpful for startups needing skills on-demand.
  
  
• Flexibility & Scalability. Need more support in a busy season? VAs make it easy to scale up or down. You can hire part-time or full-time VAs, adjust hours, or add new assistants quickly. VAs around the world can even provide 24/7 coverage, handling inquiries or tasks outside your time zone.
  
  
• Increased Productivity. Delegating tasks to a VA frees leadership to focus on growth and core strategy. In one client story, an entrepreneur’s first VA accomplished his entire to-do list in just 5 hours. With routine work off your plate, you can concentrate on high-impact priorities.
  
  
• Improved Work-Life Balance. Executives often juggle long hours and stress. Virtual assistants reduce burnout by taking over time-consuming “secondary” tasks. This lets you focus on what matters—scaling the business—and even reclaim personal time.
  
  

In summary, a well-chosen virtual assistant can serve as an executive assistant, administrative team, and cost-saver all in one. The key is to delegate strategically. As one MySigrid guide notes, “the key to boosting your productivity…is to delegate secondary and microtasks to trusted virtual assistants”.

What Can a Virtual Assistant Do? Common Tasks

Virtual assistants cover a broad range of duties. Typical areas include:

• Administrative Support: Scheduling meetings and calendars, managing email, booking travel, data entry, document prep, and more.
  
  
• Content Creation: Writing blog posts, newsletters, or marketing copy; managing editorial calendars and SEO tasks.
  
  
• Social Media Management: Scheduling posts, engaging followers, monitoring metrics, and curating content to keep your brand active online.
  
  
• Customer Support: Responding to inquiries via email or chat, processing orders, and handling basic customer service to ensure clients get timely responses.
  
  
• Project Management Support: Assisting with project coordination — for example, delegating subtasks, tracking deadlines, and keeping team members updated via project tools.
  
  

“Pretty much any task that can be handled remotely can be done by a virtual assistant. From project and travel management to specialized research and bookkeeping, VAs can provide high-quality support at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house staff.”. In practice, that means a VA can even serve as a project manager, overseeing workflows and processes under your guidance.

Virtual Assistant vs. Executive Assistant vs. Full-Time Employee

It helps to clarify these roles:

• Virtual Assistant (VA): Generally a remote contractor or agency employee who can support many projects. VAs work virtually (no office), often across time zones. They can wear many hats, from admin to marketing support. Because they’re typically flexible/part-time and work remotely, they cost less in overhead than an in-house hire.
  
  
• Executive Assistant (EA): Traditionally an EA focuses on high-level support for an executive – scheduling that executive’s calendar, preparing meeting briefs, coordinating travel, and often handling confidential communications. EAs may work in-person or remotely. A virtual executive assistant blends EA tasks with remote flexibility.
  
  
• Full-Time Employee (FTE): An in-house staff member working on your payroll. Hiring an FTE means fixed salary, benefits, training time, and usually a specific role with a defined scope. In contrast, a VA can be hired flexibly for the hours and tasks you need.
  
  

In short, a VA can often cover much of what an EA does (and more), but purely remote and on-demand. Compared to an FTE, a VA avoids the costs of benefits, office space, and idle downtime. In fact, outsourcing (hiring a remote VA) lets you “only pay for the service when needed, rather than employing workers full-time”. This model works especially well for startups and small businesses that don’t have the budget or need for multiple in-house hires.

When a Virtual Assistant Makes a Good Project Manager

Not every project needs a full-time on-site manager. For many small to mid-sized projects, or ongoing programs, a skilled virtual assistant can step into a project management coordinator role. A VA can maintain project momentum by handling tasks such as:

• Project Planning & Scheduling: Crafting detailed project plans with clear milestones, deadlines and deliverables.
  
  
• Resource Allocation: Organizing who does what – e.g., assigning tasks to team members or external vendors, ensuring the right skills are on each task.
  
  
• Team Coordination: Keeping team members aligned. For instance, a VA-PM can run status meetings, flag delays, and circulate updates.
  
  
• Risk Monitoring: Identifying potential issues early (missed deadlines, scope creep) and alerting you with solutions.
  
  
• Budget & Timeline Tracking: Watching budgets and timelines, and reporting variances so nothing gets out of control.
  
  
• Communication & Reporting: Acting as a central point of contact, sending regular status reports, and ensuring stakeholders have visibility into progress.
  
  

In practice, tools like Trello, Asana, Monday.com, or ClickUp make this collaboration seamless. These platforms let you assign tasks, set due dates, and monitor progress in real time. As one source notes, project management tools (e.g. Asana, Trello, Monday.com) “help teams stay on schedule and meet deadlines”. A VA versed in these tools can effectively oversee a remote project: setting it up and keeping everyone accountable.

The key is clarity. When handing off project duties, provide your VA with all the details: objectives, priorities, access, and any existing documentation. As MySigrid explains, their virtual project managers excel by “crafting detailed project plans with clear timelines, tasks, and milestones” and by supplying “detailed tracking and regular status reports”. With proper processes in place, many routine projects can be guided by a VA, freeing you to focus on high-level strategy.

Essential Tools for Remote Project Management

Successful remote projects require the right tools. Commonly used solutions include:

• Task & Project Management: Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Monday.com – These platforms let you break projects into tasks, set deadlines, and visually track progress on boards or timelines.
  
  
• Communication: Slack or Microsoft Teams – Centralized chat and channels help the team coordinate in real time. These tools reduce email overload and keep project chats organized.
  
  
• Video Conferencing: Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams – For virtual meetings, quick check-ins, or stand-ups with your remote team.
  
  
• Document Collaboration: Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 – Share documents, spreadsheets, and slide decks in the cloud, allowing live co-editing.
  
  
• Time & Productivity: Time-tracking apps (like Clockify) and focus tools help manage billable hours or personal productivity during project sprints.
  
  
• Security & File Sharing: Dropbox, OneDrive, or secure VPNs – Protect sensitive project documents while giving all collaborators easy access.
  
  

By combining these tools with a disciplined workflow, a VA can function as the project’s coordinator. For example, they might create tasks in Asana, update statuses as team members complete work, then share a weekly report via Slack or email. The integration of tools means you can be “hands-off” and still see real-time progress.

Outsourcing vs. Offshoring: Which Model Suits You?

When hiring a virtual project manager, consider how you source talent. Two key approaches are:

• Outsourcing: Contracting project work to a third-party provider (which could be in your country or abroad). Outsourcing lets you tap specialized knowledge and pay for services as needed. For instance, if your startup needs occasional help with marketing, you can outsource to a VA marketing agency without hiring a full-time marketer. The main benefit is flexibility: you gain expertise quickly and often at lower cost than in-house.
  
  
• Offshoring: Setting up operations or hiring employees in another country (often for cost reasons). Offshoring is similar to outsourcing but usually refers to relocating tasks to a foreign team. For example, you might contract a Philippine company to handle bookkeeping and project coordination. Offshoring’s biggest advantage is labor cost savings – wages and taxes can be much lower overseas. However, offshoring may involve more management overhead and different regulations.
  
  

Indeed, the difference is subtle. “Offshoring is when a company transfers business operations to another country,” whereas outsourcing simply means hiring an external party for the work. In practice, many VAs are technically outsourcing (you hire through a VA agency or freelancer site) and also offshoring (they live overseas).

Which is better? If you value control and loyalty, outsourcing domestically or to onshore freelancers might suit you. If cost reduction is paramount, and you can handle the management, offshoring to a low-cost region can dramatically cut expenses. Whichever you choose, remember that both models aim to improve efficiency. A balanced remote strategy often blends in-house roles with outsourced support.

AI-Powered vs. Human Virtual Assistants

The rise of artificial intelligence is adding new options to the mix. AI-powered virtual assistants (like Siri, Alexa, ChatGPT, or dedicated bots) can handle many repetitive tasks. For example, an AI assistant can filter emails, schedule meetings, and answer basic customer queries automatically. AI bots are typically very affordable once set up, and they work 24/7 without breaks. They excel at processing large data volumes quickly and can scale instantly as workloads grow.

However, AI has limits. Machines lack emotional intelligence and creativity. They can struggle with ambiguous situations, personalized customer outreach, and complex project decisions. In contrast, a human virtual assistant brings a “human premium”: empathy, critical thinking, and adaptability. A human VA can interpret nuance, handle delicate client conversations, and shift between tasks on the fly. This makes them ideal for high-touch roles like executive support or nuanced project management.

In practice, many businesses use a hybrid approach. Let AI tools automate scheduling, reminders, and data entry, while a human VA oversees bigger-picture coordination and customer relations. The goal is to use technology to boost efficiency (freeing up both you and the VA), but rely on people for the tasks that truly require a personal touch.

Figure: AI-driven tools (like chatbots and smart assistants) can speed up routine tasks, but human VAs provide empathy and complex problem-solving. (Image: Pexels)

Tips for Hiring and Managing Your VA

Getting the most out of a virtual assistant requires clear processes:

1. Define the Role and Tasks: List exactly what you want the VA to handle. The clearer the brief (platforms, deadlines, deliverables), the faster they can start. For example, rather than “handle social media,” specify “create 3 Instagram posts per week using these graphics”.
   
   
2. Use the Right Platforms: Post jobs on VA agencies or platforms that vet talent. MySigrid’s virtual assistant services and similar firms can match you with trained staff. (See MySigrid’s how-to-hire guide for tips.)
   
   
3. Check Skills and References: Interview candidates to verify skills. Ask for examples of similar work (e.g., project plans or social media posts). Testing them on a small task first can be useful.
   
   
4. Onboard with Training: Provide any necessary tools access and guides. It’s often worth spending a few hours to train your VA on your systems and preferences. Over time, this investment pays off.
   
   
5. Set Priorities and Communication: Use a project management tool (Trello/Asana) and schedule regular check-ins. Make sure the VA knows which tasks are urgent. Keep an open line of communication – daily or weekly meetings can prevent small issues from becoming big problems.
   
   
6. Empower and Trust: Once trained, give your VA autonomy to make decisions on their tasks. Trust that they can manage the details. Reliable VAs will save you countless follow-up emails. As one CEO noted, a well-chosen VA not only completed tasks quickly but “was efficient and only needed less supervision, allowing me to get more work done without working longer hours.”
   
   

Short, consistent feedback loops are crucial. If something isn’t done right, correct it early. Over time, a good VA will adapt and often become indispensable. As one MySigrid article puts it, virtual assistants are entrepreneurs’ “secret weapon” for productivity.

Scaling Your Startup with a Remote Team

For growing startups, virtual teams offer huge leverage. You can assemble a global support team without traditional overhead. Project managers, developers, content creators, and admins can all work remotely and coordinate online. This lowers your fixed costs and lets you test new roles quickly. As one expert points out, VA arrangements are inherently scalable: during busy periods you simply increase VA hours, and during lulls you dial them back. This flexibility is especially valuable for seasonal or project-based work.

Another advantage: building a remote support team often grows your overall business capacity. Many businesses find that as they outsource more VA tasks, they can take on even more clients or products – effectively doing more with the same in-house staff. This can translate to higher revenue without proportional staff increases. In other words, smart outsourcing and VA utilization can directly fuel faster growth and profitability.

Selecting the Best Tools and Services

If you’re convinced, here are some practical keywords and solutions to explore:

• Virtual Assistant Services: Compare providers based on expertise (e.g. MySigrid, Belay, Time Etc, etc.). Look for agencies that offer dedicated assistants and project managers with industry experience.
  
  
• Remote Staffing Platforms: Sites like Upwork or OnlineJobs.ph can connect you with freelance VAs in specific regions (e.g. Filipino VAs at ~$400/month). Consider platforms that vet candidates or offer support.
  
  
• AI Productivity Tools: Leverage AI like ChatGPT or scheduling bots for simple tasks. This frees up your VA to handle more complex work.
  
  
• Security & Compliance: Ensure NDAs and secure file sharing. Use trusted tools (Zoom, Slack, Google Workspace) that are IT-compliant for your industry.
  
  

A Final Note: Human + AI = Best of Both Worlds

While AI is powerful, many business owners still value the “human premium.” Complex projects, creative tasks, and sensitive customer interactions often demand a person’s touch. That’s why MySigrid emphasizes a hybrid approach: using technology with well-trained human assistants. As CEO Sherman Baldwin put it, his MySigrid assistant’s “positive attitude, strong skills and [responsiveness]…show a bright future for [her] eventually managing a team”. In other words, skilled VAs can grow with your company and even lead small teams themselves.

Get Started with a Virtual Assistant Project Manager

Virtual assistants can be a strategic force multiplier for your startup or business. By outsourcing the right tasks and perhaps even project coordination, you gain time to focus on vision and growth. Tools like Trello, Slack, and Zoom make remote collaboration easy, and agencies like MySigrid provide trained VA talent.

Ready to delegate and scale? Book a consultation with MySigrid today and discover how a dedicated virtual assistant or project manager can streamline your operations. Connect with Paul H. Østergaard on LinkedIn for more insights on ethical remote work and virtual teams.

Sources: Industry studies and expert analyses, including market reports and surveys, as well as MySigrid’s own research and case examples.