How Many Hours a Week Does an Offshore Hire Need?

Between twenty and forty hours, for almost every hire that works out. We do take clients on as few as five hours a week and some of those arrangements have run for years — but it is the weakest version of this, and it is worth understanding why before you settle on a number.

The number you choose matters more than the rate you pay, because it decides whether the person ever gets far enough into your business to be useful without you standing next to them. Here is how to work out yours.

Count a fortnight, don't trust the feeling

Before you decide anything, audit two weeks. For ten working days, keep a running list of every task you did that somebody else could have done, with the minutes beside it. Not categories — actual tasks. "Rebooked Thursday's appointments, 18 minutes." "Chased three overdue invoices, 25 minutes." "Retyped the supplier quote into the system, 12 minutes."

Write it as you go. Lists reconstructed on Friday afternoon are always short, and they are short in a predictable direction: you remember the four jobs you resent and forget the forty you do on autopilot.

Nearly everyone who does this properly lands well above their guess, for four reasons.

You time the task and not the run-up. Finding the file, working out where you left it, and getting your head back into what you were doing afterwards is often longer than the task itself.
A fortnight misses the monthly and quarterly work. Add the BAS scramble, month-end reconciling and the reporting separately, spread across the year.
You only count what you hate. The five-minute jobs you barely notice, thirty times a week, are usually half the total.
The biggest one: the work you have already stopped doing appears nowhere. The report you no longer run, the follow-ups you have quietly let go, the quotes that go out two days late. None of it is on the list because it is not happening — and it is exactly the work you are hiring for.

People who open a call with "maybe five hours a week?" usually finish the audit somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five.

What five hours a week actually buys

The honest part first. It can work. Where the work is genuinely rule-bound, self-contained and repeats — product listings, data entry, a weekly invoice run, appointment reminders — five hours a week is a real arrangement, and we run them.

What it cannot do is build context, and context is most of what you are actually buying. Someone at five hours a week meets your business an hour at a time. They see one week's worth of exceptions in a month. They never accumulate enough of your history to recognise the situation in front of them, so every task that turns on judgement runs to the edge of what they know and stops.

Which means it stops with you. The straightforward eighty per cent goes out the door; the awkward twenty per cent comes back for a decision — and the awkward twenty per cent is the part you wanted off your desk.

Two more costs are practical rather than philosophical. At a handful of hours the person is working elsewhere the rest of the week, so your systems are one of several sets they are holding in their head; that is a memory problem, not a loyalty problem. And every session starts cold — an hour on Tuesday, an hour on Thursday, a week between touches, with a real slice of each one spent re-reading the thread to work out where things were left.

What changes at half-time, and again at full-time

Around twenty hours something shifts. The person is in your week every day rather than visiting it. They start recognising your clients by name and your suppliers by habit. They meet the same exception twice, which is the point at which they can handle it instead of asking. You stop being the bottleneck on second-level work, and the daily rhythm — inbox, follow-ups, bookings, chasing — can genuinely leave your desk.

At full-time it changes again, and this is why full-time dedicated is the model we build everything around. The person stops being someone you hand tasks to and becomes someone who has a job. They pick up the overflow nobody scheduled. They spot the thing that looks wrong before it becomes a problem, because they have seen what right looks like two hundred times. Within a few months they are the one who knows the process — which, if you are honest, is what you wanted when you started looking.

Retention runs the same way. A full-time dedicated role is a career and people stay in it for years. A five-hour arrangement is something anyone leaves the week a full-time offer arrives, and then you are handing over cold again. Most of what goes wrong with an offshore hire is decided before day one — our guide on why offshore hires fail covers the rest — and choosing too few hours is a quieter version of the same mistake.

The arithmetic, in dollars

A full-time dedicated team member starts at A$14 an hour plus GST. That is $560 a week, roughly $2,430 a month, and $29,120 across a year — against $75,000 to $85,000 all-in for the local equivalent once you have added super, leave, payroll tax and a desk. There is no placement, recruitment, setup or exit fee at any point, the initial contract runs three months and then month to month, and it is about two weeks from brief to first day. The calculator will run your own numbers and the pricing page has the detail.

Now the part that decides the hours question. Your side of the cost barely moves with them. Writing the process down, fifteen minutes a day of feedback through the first fortnight, answering the questions that come — that investment is very nearly identical whether the person works five hours a week or forty. Five hours a week is about 250 hours of work in a year. Full-time is around 2,000. Same setup, eight times the return on it.

Smaller engagements are also priced a little higher per hour, which is the same arithmetic seen from our side: recruiting, hiring and managing one person costs what it costs regardless of how many hours they work. We quote those on the call, and the FAQ sets out how terms and billing run.

Working out which one you are

Three questions, answered against the audit rather than the instinct.

Does the list add up to more than twenty hours a week? Could you describe the work well enough that a capable stranger could follow it? And on a quiet Tuesday, would there still be something useful for them to do? Three yeses is a full-time hire, and it is worth starting there rather than growing into it — the ramp-up is the expensive part and you only want to pay it once.

Twelve to twenty hours honestly counted is a half-time start with a review at three months, and most of those roles grow. Under ten, start small — but be deliberate about what you put in it. Part-time genuinely suits bounded, repeating work with a right answer somebody else can check: listings, data entry, reconciliations, invoice runs, appointment reminders, scheduled posts. It genuinely does not suit client-facing work where continuity matters, anything that needs your history to make sense of it, or anything where one question to you blocks the whole task. Our framework for what to delegate first and the list of tasks that travel well both go further on that.

If the honest answer is "not yet"

Sometimes the audit comes back at six hours and none of it is delegable. That is a real result and it is much better to find it now than in month two.

Three things to do with it. Write one process down properly, even badly — it is the highest-return hour you will spend and it is what makes the eventual hire work. Keep a second list of the work you would do if somebody had the time, because that is what justifies the role and it never appears in an audit of what you currently do. Then look at whether one job is hiding across two or three half jobs: bookkeeping at eight hours, the inbox at six, CRM tidying at five and reporting at four is a role, and it is the most common thing people miss when they think in tasks instead of weeks.

If you want a second opinion on the number, that is most of what a discovery call is for. We will go through the list with you and say what we think it adds up to, including when we think it is too early. How it works sets out the rest of the process, and you can book a call whenever your list is ready.

How we would staff this

How we'd staff the hours you just counted

If the fortnight's audit came back above twenty hours, this is the role we would brief off it. We hire in the Philippines on your behalf, so you get one dedicated person on your hours and in your tools — from A$14 an hour plus GST full-time, no placement, recruitment, setup or exit fee, and about two weeks from brief to first day. Bring the list you wrote; we scope the role from that rather than from a template.

Full-time dedicated administration assistant

What they do

Runs the daily rhythm you counted — inbox triage, appointment rebooking and reminders, follow-ups, chasing overdue invoices — on a set schedule instead of whenever you get to it
Picks up the monthly and quarterly work a fortnight's audit misses: registers and renewals nobody chases until something lapses, the timesheet and supplier-bill chase before month end, the standing reports you quietly stopped running (bookkeeping and BAS preparation sit in a separate role we would brief alongside it)
Absorbs the five-minute jobs you do thirty times a week — retyping supplier quotes into the system, data entry, filing documents so they can be found again — the ones that never feel worth writing down
Handles the exception the second time they meet it rather than sending it back to you, which is the whole reason for buying enough hours to build the context
Writes the process down as they learn it, so the version in their head becomes the version on paper and the second hire is easier

What stays with you

Anything that needs an Australian licence, registration or your signature — approving payments, tax lodgement and sign-off, financial or legal advice, the final call with a client
The judgement calls on the awkward twenty per cent with no precedent yet: pricing exceptions, unhappy clients, anything where the answer is a choice rather than a rule
The first fortnight of feedback — about fifteen minutes a day, looking at actual work and saying what is wrong. Nobody can do the handover on your behalf
Deciding what the role is for, including the second list of work you would do if somebody had the time, because that never appears in an audit of what you currently do

From A$14/hr + GST · full-time and dedicated · about two weeks from brief to first day · no placement or exit fees

See the role →

Frequently asked questions

Can I start part-time and increase the hours later?

Yes. Full-time at forty hours and part-time at twenty are the standard engagements, and plenty of clients begin smaller — fifteen, ten or even five hours — then scale up once they see what comes off their plate. Scaling the same person up does not restart the handover. But if the audit already shows the hours, start there: the ramp-up costs the same either way and you only want to pay it once.

How many hours a week is a full-time virtual assistant?

Forty hours — eight hours a day, five days a week, worked to your hours rather than theirs. Australian business hours are standard, and the shift is agreed with the team member before they start rather than imposed afterwards. Part-time is twenty hours, structured the same way. For Australian clients a full-time dedicated team member starts at A$14 an hour plus GST, which is $560 a week and roughly $2,430 a month. Specialist roles sit higher.

How much of my own time does it take to manage an offshore hire?

About fifteen minutes a day of feedback through the first fortnight, then roughly thirty minutes a week once the work is running — two to three hours a week across the first month, questions included. The part that decides the outcome sits before day one: writing your processes down. That investment is very nearly identical whether the person works five hours a week or forty, which is the argument for hiring enough hours to be worth paying it once.

Is a part-time offshore hire cheaper than a full-time one?

Cheaper in total, more expensive per hour. You are buying fewer hours so the invoice is smaller, but lower hours are priced accordingly, because recruiting, hiring and managing one person costs the same whether they work five hours a week or forty. Full-time starts at A$14 an hour plus GST for Australian clients, and smaller weeks are quoted on the discovery call. There are no placement, recruitment, setup or exit fees on any of them.

What happens if the work changes or runs out after I've hired someone?

Roles evolve — an admin assistant grows into bookkeeping, a customer service person starts doing outbound — and retraining someone who already knows your business is cheaper than replacing them. Tell us and we train into it. If the hours genuinely will not fill, the initial term is three months and then month to month, with no exit penalties at any point, so you can reshape the arrangement rather than carry it.

Can one hire cover two part-time jobs, or two of my businesses?

Yes. A dedicated team member works only on your work during their hours and you decide what fills them, so two or three half jobs that never justified a hire on their own can add up to one solid role — bookkeeping at eight hours, the inbox at six, CRM tidying at five, reporting at four. The same holds across two businesses you own. What does not work is two managers briefing the same person separately with no agreed priority.

Sources & further reading

StaffingSolutions.io, "Pricing" — The A$14 an hour plus GST full-time starting rate, the absence of placement, recruitment, setup and exit fees, and the $75,000–$85,000 all-in cost of the local equivalent.
StaffingSolutions.io, "Frequently asked questions" — Full-time (40 hours) and part-time (20 hours) as the standard engagements, smaller weeks from 15, 10 or 5 hours priced accordingly, the three-month initial term then month to month with no exit penalties, Australian business hours as the default shift, and two to three hours a week of onboarding time in the first month.
StaffingSolutions.io, "How it works" — Around two weeks from brief to first day.
StaffingSolutions.io, "Why offshore hires fail" (guide) — The management load on a new hire — about fifteen minutes a day of feedback through the first fortnight, then thirty minutes a week — and why the setup investment, not the hourly rate, decides whether the hire works.
StaffingSolutions.io, "StaffingSolutions.io vs traditional BPO" — A dedicated team member is not a shared seat — they work only for you during their hours.

Laarni TumbokonHR manager, Manila

Laarni has six years of virtual staffing HR management experience, specialising in real estate, digital marketing and e-commerce, with a proven track record recruiting top talent and implementing effective HR strategies. At StaffingSolutions.io she owns the recruitment standards, onboarding and the people side of every placement, which is why support does not stop at the end of week one.

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