I want to talk about subcontracting again. Because this seems to be a challenging area for many VAs. There are a couple of reasons why a VA may want to subcontract. Those being that they don’t have the time to do the job themselves, they don’t want to do the job themselves, or they can’t do the job themselves.

When you make the decision to subcontract, you take on the role of middle-man and you are now required to manage this project or task.

This means that you need to ensure that the communication between client and subcontractor is useful, time-efficient and productive. If you cannot do this, it’s best that you don’t subcontract as you are just someone who is getting in the way. In this case, just direct your client to the best provider.

Most of the time when a VA subcontracts, they get the client to liaise through them rather than directly with the subcontractor. It is important not to do this for the sole purpose of “keeping the client” and stopping them from going off and working together with the subcontractor.

Your purpose should be to provide a more complete and holistic service to your client, allowing them one main contact person instead of having to liaise with multiple contractors. In some cases this process will be very easy – simply passing the job on to the subcontractor, checking it when it’s returned and delivering to the client. But there may be cases where you need to step it up and take on more of a management role.

Here is a summary of some of the situations where you need to step up your involvement (or step away):

1. The client is unclear about what they want and is not sending through clear directives.

If you are passing on unclear, messy requests from the client all you will achieve are unclear and messy results. Your contractor may feel that their reputation is at risk as they cannot deliver at the standard they would like, because the right information is not forthcoming and they cannot speak to the client directly.

And your client will potentially waste their money.

In this situation, you need to identify (and listen if the subcontractor brings this to your attention) when directives are not clear and the communication is going no-where. It is your role to stop that hazardous ball from rolling on, and to connect with both client and subcontractor about what their needs are. Sometimes, especially in the case of web related work, you may need to be the ‘translator’ between the two. If the client is not sure what their goals are, this is when you need to decide how they can obtain clarification on goals before continuing.

2. The job has definite timelines and other tasks associated with it that the subcontractor is not a part of.

When the job or project has more than one part, you need to manage the various elements of it if you have agreed to take on that job using subcontractors. You need to let all parties know about timelines, expectations, implications and amendments. In some cases you also need to be the mediator, the translator or the therapist. But at the end of the day, YOU need to be delivering the end product to the client.

3. You have limited or no idea about how the service should be delivered or what information is required.

If you don’t know anything about the service that the subcontractor is providing, how are you going to ensure that the service is up to standard for your client? How will you be able to assist if anything goes wrong? Will you be able to identify if there are elements crucial to the project that are not being provided? I always recommend learning what you can about all jobs that your subcontractors do.

An example of this is with a recent project that I hired someone to assist me with. Any and every time I asked a question or expressed concern, I was met with “I’ll ask my team”. I’d then have to wait up to 12 hours for them to ask their team and get back to me, all the while hoping that they understood what my question or concern was about and that Chinese Whispers wasn’t at play. My direct contact did not show a strong understanding of the project or how it was being developed and for me, this was quite frustrating.

Subcontracting is smart for business. It’s important for growth. But if it was easy – everyone would be amazing at it! And everyone is not.

When you subcontract, you risk the reputation of yourself and the subcontractor. It is important to remember that when you subcontract you have still taken on the full responsibility for the delivery of the job. The buck stops with you. You cannot just pass messages from party 1 to party 2 – you need to earn your piece of the pie.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Rosie