Do I need an employee or a virtual assistant?
There comes a point when a business needs more hands.
The work is there. Important things are waiting. You are doing jobs at peculiar times of day, using your inbox as an overflow department and telling yourself that next month might be quieter. It probably won’t be.
But recognising that you need support doesn’t automatically tell you what kind of support you need.
Do you employ someone? Do you work with a virtual assistant? Or do you carry on doing everything yourself until the decision is made for you by exhaustion, an unhappy client or an important task finally disappearing under the digital sofa?
Let’s avoid option three.
The choice between an employee and a virtual assistant usually depends on how much work you have, how predictable it is, how closely the person needs to be integrated into your business and how much ongoing commitment you are ready to make. An employee may be better when you need regular availability, substantial weekly capacity and somebody working as part of the internal team. A VA can be a proportionate choice when the work is smaller, variable, project-based or doesn’t yet justify creating a permanent role.
Start with the work, not the person
Before comparing costs, look at what you actually need somebody to do.
Is there enough work to fill a role every week?
Does it need to happen at fixed times?
Will the person need to be available throughout the working day?
Or do you have a collection of necessary jobs that need ownership, but perhaps only amount to five, ten or twenty hours each month?
You might need client follow-ups organised, documents formatted, your CRM maintained, course content uploaded or a project moved forward. That is real work. It matters. But it doesn’t necessarily add up to a job.
Small business owners sometimes wait far too long for support because they assume the only alternative to doing everything themselves is employing somebody. They picture recruitment, payroll, management and a permanent salary and conclude that the business isn’t ready.
A VA provides another option. You can buy an agreed amount of support or commission a defined project without inventing enough extra tasks to fill a role that doesn’t yet exist.
An employee’s salary isn’t the full cost
When comparing the two options, it is tempting to place an employee’s hourly wage next to a VA’s hourly rate. The employee will almost certainly look cheaper. But those two figures do not represent the same thing.
An employee’s salary is only part of the cost to the business. Depending on the person and the circumstances, the employer may also need to account for:
Employer National Insurance
Workplace pension contributions
Paid annual leave
Sick leave and other statutory absence
Recruitment and onboarding
Payroll and HR administration
Equipment, software and workspace
Training, management and development
Insurance and other per-person business costs
For the 2026/27 tax year, the standard employer National Insurance rate is 15% on earnings above the £5,000 secondary threshold, although eligible businesses may reduce their liability through the Employment Allowance. Employers must generally contribute at least 3% of qualifying earnings to an eligible employee’s workplace pension. Most full-time workers are also entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid annual leave. You can check the current details on GOV.UK’s employer rates and thresholds, workplace pension guidance and holiday entitlement guidance.
Paid leave should not simply be added to a salary as though you pay it twice. It does, however, affect the amount of working capacity that salary provides across the year.
Then there are the less tidy costs. The laptop. The extra software licences. The time spent recruiting, explaining, managing, supporting and making sure you are meeting your responsibilities as an employer.
The British Chambers of Commerce recently brought many of these wider pressures together in its UK Business Cost Stack Calculator. It is not an employee-versus-VA calculator, but it does illustrate why the cost of running a business can’t be understood from one headline figure alone.
A VA’s rate contains different things
A VA’s hourly rate may look considerably higher than an employee’s apparent hourly wage.
That does not mean the VA is pocketing the difference while cackling over an expensive biscuit.
A genuinely self-employed VA runs their own business. Their rate needs to cover their tax, National Insurance, pension, equipment, software, insurance, professional development, administration and the time they cannot invoice to clients. They do not receive paid holiday or sick pay from your business. You are normally paying for agreed working time, a defined amount of capacity or a particular result.
You may also avoid many of the costs involved in creating an internal role. The VA will often provide their own equipment and standard business software, although you may need to give them secure access to client-specific systems.
The comparison is therefore not:
Employee: £15 per hour
VA: £35 per hour
It is:
What will each arrangement cost overall, and which one gives the business the capacity and working relationship it actually needs?
How predictable is the work?
This may be the most important question.
If you know you need somebody for twenty-five hours every week, throughout the year, an employee may offer better value and greater continuity.
If you need eight hours one month, fifteen the next and none during a quiet period, a VA may fit the business more naturally.
The same applies to projects.
You may need a concentrated block of support to organise a CRM, build a set of client documents, research suppliers, upload a course or bring order to a disorganised collection of work.
Once the job is completed, the need may disappear.
Employing someone for a temporary collection of unfinished tasks would be a rather dramatic response. A defined VA project gives the work a beginning, boundary and outcome.
How available does the person need to be?
An employee usually works agreed hours and can be available as part of the normal working day. That matters if the role involves responding quickly, dealing with a continuous flow of internal work or being readily available to colleagues and customers.
A VA normally works with several clients. They agree deadlines, priorities, communication arrangements and the capacity available to you, but they are not generally sitting beside their inbox waiting for you to produce another task. That works brilliantly when the work can be planned, batched or delivered by an agreed date. It works less brilliantly if what you actually need is someone available from nine until five, five days a week, responding immediately and working almost entirely under your direction. In that situation, you may need an employee, not a VA with a suspiciously employee-shaped working arrangement.
How integrated do they need to be?
An employee can become deeply embedded in the business. They build internal knowledge, participate in team discussions, understand the history behind decisions and develop alongside the organisation. If the role is central to daily operations or relies heavily on long-term internal relationships, that integration can be enormously valuable.
A good VA will still learn about your business and may work with you for many years. They can understand your preferences, spot patterns, improve processes and become a trusted source of continuity. But they remain an external business providing a service.
That distinction matters in practice and legally. Simply calling somebody self-employed does not make them self-employed. The real arrangement, including control, independence and how the work is carried out, determines employment status. Acas provides guidance on employment status and genuine self-employment.
A VA should not be used as a convenient way to avoid an employer’s responsibilities while treating the person exactly like an employee.
What about management?
Employees need management.
That doesn’t mean hovering behind them or holding a weekly meeting about the meeting you held last week. It means setting direction, agreeing priorities, giving feedback, supporting their development and meeting your responsibilities as an employer.
A VA also needs context, decisions and clear communication. Handing over a mysterious folder labelled “SORT THIS” and disappearing for three weeks is unlikely to produce anybody’s finest work.
But the relationship is business-to-business. You agree the required outcome, scope, access, timescale and communication. The VA then takes responsibility for delivering the work within that arrangement.
For some business owners, that is exactly what they need: not another person to manage, but somebody capable of taking ownership of a defined area and moving it forward.
When might an employee be the better choice?
An employee may be more suitable when:
You have a substantial and predictable amount of work
You need regular availability at specified times
The work is central to the daily operation of the business
The person needs to be closely integrated with the internal team
You want to develop the role and individual over the longer term
You need to control when, where and how the work is completed
The overall volume makes employment more commercially effective
Choosing an employee is not the expensive “wrong” answer. If the business genuinely needs a permanent role, trying to divide it awkwardly among external providers may create more cost, complexity and frustration.
When might a VA be a proportionate choice?
A VA may be more suitable when:
You need support but don’t yet have enough work for an employee
The workload changes from month to month
You have a defined project or backlog to complete
You need particular experience for a limited amount of time
The work can be planned around agreed deadlines
You want to add capacity without immediately creating a permanent role
You need somebody to take ownership of work rather than wait for a stream of daily instructions
You can begin with a few hours, a contained area of responsibility or a fixed-price project.
That first piece of work may be all you need. It may develop into regular VA support. Or it may help you understand the work well enough to create a proper employee role later.
It doesn’t have to be a forever decision
Choosing a VA now does not mean deciding never to employ anybody. Sometimes a VA gives a growing business breathing room before recruitment. They can help organise the work, identify recurring activities and establish processes that make a future role much clearer.
Equally, employing somebody does not mean every occasional, specialist or project-based activity must sit within their job description forever.
Many businesses use a mixture of employees and external support. The aim is not to declare one arrangement universally better. It is to match the work with the right kind of capacity.
If the work is regular, substantial and needs to sit firmly inside the business, an employee may be the right investment.
If the work is smaller, variable or clearly contained, a VA may give you the support you need without creating a role before the business is ready.
The important thing is not to keep doing everything yourself simply because you assumed those were the only two choices.
