Virtual Assistant Standard Operating Agreement
Welcome! If you are reading this, you likely have been on or are just joining our team of Virtual Assistants (VAs). I want to thank you for your commitment to our team and to your craft as a VA. You are a valuable member of our team and we want to support you in every way we can. Which includes helping you to understand the details of your job and our standard operating agreements.
We hold everyone on our team to a high standard. Our standard operating agreements, which are outlined below, will support you in understanding what is expected of you. Truly, these rules are merely common courtesy we ask that you give to our team. If you have any questions or comments, we invite you to email operations@blitzmetrics.com and share your thoughts with us.
If you are looking for your job description, you can find links to all of our VA positions at the VA Welcome page.
Hours Per Week
We hire full time team members. That means 6 to 8 hours every day which is about 40 hours per week.
Schedule
We are generally open Monday through Friday. We do permit some flexibility but it requires communication with your supervisor.
If you need to take time off during a workday, we ask that you make up these hours at the beginning of your shift, after your shift, or work the weekend. To do any of these requires that you notify your supervisor in advance based on why you are unavailable.
Sometimes, urgent tasks arise. You may be asked to support over the weekend and given short notice. We do the best we can to communicate with you in advance to ensure you have time with your families and can plan your personal lives. These off-hours tasks are not mandatory.
If you live outside of the area where your timezone is not Eastern Standard Time (EST), you must set your work schedule within the day such that 50% or more of the hours are within 9 AM to 5 PM EST. You may be given permission to shift your schedule earlier or later depending on the needs of the company. You are responsible for discussing this with your Team Lead.
Meetings
VAs have a team meeting on Monday and Thursday at 9pm HK. This is mandatory.
Timeliness And Tardiness
Meetings will start promptly at the designated time. Do not be late. It is expected that you will be on time for every meeting you are required to attend. It is best to plan to be 5 minutes early so you do not keep the team waiting.
There is no excuse for poor communication. If you are expecting to be delayed, whether you know a day in advance or at the last moment, we expect you to give the common courtesy of sending a notification to your team lead as soon as you can. Notifying us after you are late is not acceptable.
Charging Your Time
- Time recording shall be in accordance with our time charging training videos:
How To Record Time In TimeCamp
How To Add A New Time Entry In TimeCamp
How To Properly Select A Time Entry For A Team Call
- You must use the TimeCamp desktop application.
- Hours must be entered directly into Timecamp while you work.
- In instances where you have technical issues or Timecamp has technical issues, notify your supervisor that you need to manually record your time. You need approval. If this is for any longer than 1 day, you need a manager's approval. When you enter your time, send an email to your supervisor with your written notes, ensuring that you have clearly written down the date, tasks, and durations.
- Team Call - There is a designated time entry for the team call. You can enter it once the meeting has started.
- The process of creating your invoice is not billable time.
- You can stop your Timecamp whenever you need to take breaks, either when you need to eat or go to the bathroom, and turn it on again once you’re back.
- All time entries must have names of the task/project.
- Work hours do not include time you spend during breaks within work hours such as meal breaks, general breaks, etc.
Training Time
We have a BlitzMetrics Academy, which houses courses that teach concepts, strategies and step-by-step instructions for tasks. BlitzMetrics will require you to take some of this training for you to execute specific tasks.
You may not bill, may not charge, may not include in your TimeCamp’s timer, and may not include in your invoice the time you spend studying, training, learning, and answering quizzes in the BlitzMetrics Academy.
We have a few other resources in our google drive, namely the 1,000 task library which are full of brief focused training. Your time to take this training is not billable. Though once you start working on the application of that training, your time is billable.
BlitzMetrics will not pay you to study, train, learn and answer quizzes.
Billable Time
| Billable | Not Billable |
| Answering emails, joining team calls, submitting files, submitting End Of Day Reports | Going to the bathroom, making coffee, grabbing water, etc. |
| Setting up downloads and uploads, e.g. clicking the buttons and organizing files | The duration of the upload or download. |
| Video Editing | The duration of rendering or exporting. |
| Graphics Designing | The duration of rendering or exporting. |
| Installing applications necessary to do your work, e.g. Zoom, TimeCamp, Skype, etc. | The duration of downloading the software you need, your computer being frozen, your internet being cut-off, troubleshooting hardware issues, turning on another PC to use. |
For Video Editors and other team members
| Task | Billable in TimeCamp? |
| Understanding the video brief | Yes |
| Creating a Basecamp To-do | Yes |
| Setting up the downloading of files | Yes |
| Waiting for files to finish downloading | No |
| Editing | Yes |
| Waiting for videos to finish rendering | No |
| Setting up the uploading of files | Yes |
| Waiting for videos to finish uploading | No |
Having Enough Work
It is important to have a few days worth of tasks in your queue, which you can find in your Basecamp’s “My Assignments” tab. Oftentimes, you are involved in numerous projects—tasks that you can rely on weekly. There may be times when your workload will become low. If you estimate that you have fewer than 1 day remaining of work to do, send an instant message to your team lead immediately, at least 1 day prior to running out of work. This gives the team lead and other managers time to plan more work for you.
If you only notify your team lead when you run out of work, your team lead may not be able to assign you a task immediately. Therefore, you will not have any tasks and you will not receive any payment. Last minute notifications like this are disruptive and drive inefficiencies into your team.
Invoice Biweekly Payroll
The accounting team pays the BlitzMetrics team members every 2 weeks via PayPal, when the team has sent all the invoices. Expected to provide your invoice within 2 days of the end of the work period. Follow the instructions below to see our standards for creating invoices.
- See invoice training at “How To Make An Invoice As An Independent Contractor”.
- Invoicing template
- Check the 2021 Payroll Schedule to monitor the start and end dates of our cutoffs.
Work Volume
For most roles, tasks are designed to take a maximum 20 minutes to complete. If your tasks are taking longer than this, let your lead know so they can either provide training, add more details to the task, or break the task down into smaller steps for you to track.
Official Holidays
BlitzMetrics recognizes US holidays. You do not need to work during US holidays. If you live in a country that considers a particular day as a non-working holiday, which is not on the same day as a US holiday, expect to work on those days. If you would like to request time off on your country’s particular holiday, please make a request 14 days beforehand.
The company will not pay for holidays and the different leaves of absence.
Requests For Time Off And Schedule Adjustments
Communication is key. Notify your Team Lead and Director of Operations 14 days in advance from your requested time-off, while sending an email to operations@blitzmetrics.com to keep track of your request in the Absence Tracker. Please state the date and times of your request and your intent to either make up the time or that you are not expecting to make up your hours.
The Different Categories Of Leaves Of Absence:
- Non-emergencies
- Non-emergencies are vacation days or general time-off.
- You must communicate a request 14 days in advance to your team lead and the Director of Operations.
- You need approval.
- Sick Days
- Sick Days are when you are unable to work due to illness.
- You must communicate within the day once you know you're too sick to work.
- You do not need approval.
- Emergencies
- Emergencies are situations where you need to manage personal tasks that you cannot postpone, or you have uncontrollable technical issues that incapacitates your ability to complete your work, e.g. power outages, broken hardware, etc.
- You must communicate within the day or a few days before once you know you will be unavailable during work hours.
- You do not need approval.
- Catastrophic Emergencies
- Catastrophic emergencies are rare situations where you have no control over your ability to communicate due to a rare catastrophic event such as a tsunami, an earthquake, etc.
- You can communicate your situation once you have the ability to do so.
- You do not need approval.
The Different Scenarios For Addressing Lost Time
- If you have personal things to tend to during the work day, it is advisable to work these missed hours before or after your normal shift to ensure you work your full scheduled hours.
- If you need to take a day off, you can make up that day over the weekend or by working a few extra hours each day. If you do not plan to make up these hours, please make that clear in your request. This requires approval.
- If you need to take a few days off, it would be difficult to make up those hours. You can make up some of them over the weekend. This requires approval.
Start Of Day Updates
You must send an instant message to the operations specialist that BlitzMetrics have designated 1 minute before the start of your shift. You must do this once every business day except if you have a leave of absence.
End Of Day Updates
You must submit an End Of Day Report once every business day except if you have a leave of absence.
Scheduled Weekly Meetings
It is expected that you attend all team meetings. If you are unable to attend a meeting but you do not have approved time off, you need to notify your Team Lead and Director of Operations 2 days prior to the meeting. If there is a team meeting during your approved time off we will assume that you will not be attending the team meeting.
Synchronous Communication
During work hours, you must have Skype, and Discord open; and you must be able to attend to Skype, and Discord messages.
Agreement Inconsistencies
To read the full table, go to Agreement Inconsistencies.
| Inconsistency | Condition | Action |
| Has received at least 2 email follow-ups in an email thread or Basecamp thread | 1st |
|
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Has not replied to a Skype or Discord message | 1st | Team lead conducts a coaching call to remind the team member that Skype must be on. |
| 2nd in a row | Team lead conducts a coaching call to ask the 5 Whys and to remind the team member that Skype must be on. | |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Did not meet a deadline | 1st |
|
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Uploads file, video, folder, etc. to the wrong location | 1st | Team member studies the appropriate guide in their own time and sends a 3-5 sentence summary of what they learned (not billable). |
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Inconsistently followed a particular checklist | 1st | Team member studies the appropriate guide in their own time and sends a 3-5 sentence summary of what they learned (not billable). |
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Billed a task or project on TimeCamp with no Basecamp iteration within a day | 1st | Team member posts iteration while not billing the time. |
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Did not work 30 hours or more in a week | 1st | Team lead emails team member to verify team member can work full-time next week or to provide reasons why team member cannot do so. |
| 2nd in a row | Team lead conducts a coaching call to ask the 5 Whys to verify team member can work full-time next week. | |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Did not submit a Start Of Day Report | 1st |
|
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Did not to submit an End Of Day Report | 1st |
|
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Did not attend team call | 1st | Operations specialist mentions team member's name in LVL1_Biweekly: Fill in the Team Call Attendance tab. |
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
| |
| Billed the wrong time entry on TimeCamp | 1st |
|
| 2nd in a row |
| |
| 3rd in a row |
|
Probationary Period
| Inconsistency | Action | Assumptions |
| Did not work 30 hours or more in a week |
| Team member did not work 30 hours or more in a week three times in a row. |
| Did not to submit a Start Of Day Report |
| Team member did not submit an Start Of Day Report three times in a row. |
| Did not to submit an End Of Day Report |
| Team member did not submit an End Of Day Report three times in a row.. |
| Did not attend team call |
| Team member did not attend team call three times in a row. |
| Billed a task or project on TimeCamp with no Basecamp iteration |
| Team member billed a task or project on TimeCamp with no Basecamp iteration three times in a row. |
| Has received at least 2 email follow-ups in an email thread or Basecamp thread |
| Team member had received at least 2 email follow-ups in an email thread or Basecamp thread three times in a row. |
| Has not replied to a Skype or Discord message |
| Team member had not replied to a Skype or Discord message three times in a row. |
| Billed the wrong time entry on TimeCamp |
| Team member billed the wrong time entry on TimeCamp three times in a row. |
| Uploads file, video, folder, etc. to the wrong location |
| Team member uploaded a file, video, folder, etc. to the wrong location three times in a row. |
| Inconsistently followed a checklist |
| Team member inconsistently followed the same checklist three times in a row. |
| Did not meet a deadline |
| Team member did not meet deadlines three times in a row. |
Termination
BlitzMetrics reserves the right to terminate the contract with an independent contractor or team member at any point.
BlitzMetrics will terminate the contract with an independent contractor including, but not limited to, the following conditions.
- If the independent contractor is under a probationary period, is level 1, has an hourly rate of $2 per hour, and performs an action that is an agreement inconsistency.
- If the independent contractor produces severely substandard work.
- If the independent contractor steals company property e.g., fixed assets, intellectual properties and trade secrets. It can include fraud (intentionally misleading the employer), embezzlement (theft of corporate funds) or forgery (altered negotiable instruments).
- If the independent contractor is showing extreme insubordination towards their managers.
- If the independent contractor makes threats or performs threatening behavior to a colleague or customer.
- If they are showing excessive absenteeism which will have a negative impact on the company’s daily operations.
- If the independent contractor shows poor work ethic such as:
- Inappropriate use of time.
- Neglecting responsibilities.
- Ignores company guidelines and checklists.