No man — or woman — can serve two masters, says St Matthew. Not so, reckons Julia Stubblefield whose two bosses phone, text and email their daily instructions from opposite ends of the country.

马太说，没有人（无论男人或者女人）能侍奉两个主人。朱莉娅•斯塔布菲尔德(Julia Stubblefield)不这么认为，她的两位老板位于国内方向相反的两地，各自通过电话、短信和电子邮件向她传达每天的指示。

“It makes my job fun. It’s certainly not boring,” says Ms Stubblefield, who gave up a 15-year career as an executive personal assistant to start a family. Now her children are at school, she has returned to work, using the same administrative¹ skills she deployed² in her former positions at the BBC, Siemens and Johnson & Johnson, but as a freelance “virtual assistant”, or “VA”.

“这让我的工作很有意思。一点都不无聊，”斯塔布菲尔德说。之前15年，她一直担任高管的个人助理，后来为了组建家庭放弃了事业。现在她的孩子上学了，她重返工作岗位，使用的还是她以前在英国广播公司(BBC)、西门子(Simens)和强生(Johnson & Johnson)任职时学会的那套行政管理技能，只不过这一次她成为了一名自由职业的“虚拟助理”（virtual assistant，简称VA）。

Ms Stubblefield works from her home in Maidenhead, Berkshire. One of her bosses is an investment manager in nearby London, the other a website designer in Newcastle. The tasks they outsource to her are a mix of the professional and the personal, including diary management, sending and chasing invoices³, paying bills, booking holidays and even procuring⁴ a plastic turkey for a staff party.

斯塔布菲尔德在位于伯克郡梅登黑德(Maidenhead, Berkshire)的家中工作。她的其中一位老板是伦敦附近的一名投资经理，另一位则是纽卡斯尔(Newcastle)的一名网页设计师。他们外包给她的工作既包括专业性工作，也包括私人任务，比如管理乳品，寄送和索要发票，支付账单，安排假日行程，甚至是为员工派对采购一个塑料火鸡。

Virtual assistants — mostly women — are increasingly being used as a way of keeping the modern workplace functioning amid a shift away from full-time⁵ support staff. Their emergence⁶ reflects a shift in female working practices as well as a general squeeze on spending.

虚拟助理大多是女性。随着聘用全职支持性员工的趋势逐渐衰减，越来越多的人选择了虚拟助理，作为维持工作正常运作的一种途径。虚拟助理的出现不仅显示出女性工作习惯的变化，也反映出企业支出受到挤压的整体趋势。

For the first time in the UK, mothers raising children are more likely to have jobs than women without young families, according to the latest UK figures from the Office for National Statistics. Employment rates among women with childcare responsibilities stand at 69.6 per cent, compared with 67.5 per cent for women without.

根据英国国家统计局(Office for National Statistics)的最新数据，当前英国抚育孩子的女性比没有孩子的女性更有可能拥有工作，前者的就业率是69.6%，而后者的就业率为67.5%，这种现象在英国还是第一次出现。

For some mothers, flexible secretarial work is an attractive option, as Barnaby Lashbrooke, founder⁷ of the Time Etc agency that farms out work to Ms Stubblefield and 250 other VAs, will testify. Mr Lashbrooke says he receives thousands of applications each month from mothers keen to work from home.

对有些母亲而言，灵活的秘书工作是一个颇具吸引力的选项，正如虚拟助理派遣公司Time Etc创始人巴纳比•拉什布鲁克(Barnaby Lashbrooke)所证实的那样。他的公司将工作分派给斯塔布菲尔德和其他250名虚拟助理，他说公司每个月会收到几千份渴望在家工作的母亲提交的申请。

“The profile of women sending us applications has changed in the last few years,” he explains. “They are now better qualified⁸ with proper commercial experience under their belt.”

“过去几年，向我们提交申请的女性的简历发生了变化，”他解释道，“她们掌握了适当的商业经验，更符合职位要求。”

He adds: “We usually meet them when their kids are off to school or nursery, and they want to . . . earn some extra money, so they re-enter the employment marketplace through us.”

他补充道：“我们通常会在她们的孩子去上学或者去托儿所的时候面见她们，她们想要……挣一些额外收入，所以她们通过我们重新进入就业市场。”

The growth in the use of virtual assistants is partly demand-led. Time Etc, whose clients pay £19-£27 per hour, has been offering its services since 2007 and has grown to a size that makes it something of a bellwether⁹ for this service sector¹⁰ niche¹¹, complete with a US arm.

聘用虚拟助理的人数增长了，在一定程度上是需求推动的结果。Time Etc从2007年起开展这项服务，客户每小时需要支付19到27英镑。此后公司规模不断增长，现在已经是业内翘楚，拥有一家美国分公司。

Mr Lashbrooke says that in the past month alone its client base has grown 10 per cent. He puts that down to the growing acceptance in the UK of virtual assistants by executives and entrepreneurs who are beginning to see them as more cost-effective than employing a PA on a permanent contract, with all the attendant costs.

拉什布鲁克表示，仅仅上月，客户数量就增长了10%。他将这归因于英国国内高管和企业家对虚拟助理接受度逐渐上升。比起签订长期合同雇佣私人助理及其附带成本，他们开始认为聘用虚拟助理更划算。

But some of the growth is supply-led too, by women who enjoy the work of being a PA, but not the lengthy¹² commute¹³ or the long office hours. With email, internet and Skype at their disposal, there are few tasks that they did in the office which cannot be done remotely, on a self-employed basis and from the comfort of their home.

聘用虚拟助理的人数之所以增长，还有一部分原因是供给推动，来自喜欢私人助理这份工作，但又不想进行漫长的通勤或者长时间待在办公室的女性。她们可以自由选择电邮、互联网和Skype，这让她们基本上可以作为自由职业者，在享受家庭的舒适环境同时，远程完成办公室里的任何工作。

“It was the flexibility¹⁴ that attracted me,” agrees Fátima Malagueira, a VA who used to be a theatrical¹⁵ agent — with a couple of British soap stars among her clients — until she quit five years ago to start a family.

“吸引我的是灵活性，”虚拟助理法蒂玛•马拉盖拉(Fátima Malagueira)说。她曾经是演出经纪人，她的委托人中包括几个英国肥皂剧明星。5年前，她为了组建家庭辞去了工作。

“I used to work 14- or 15-hour days and that’s not sustainable with a family. But my work as a virtual assistant can be fitted around my daughter and my commitment to her.”

“我曾经每天工作14或者15个小时，这对有家的人来说是无法维持的。但虚拟助理的工作可以在我女儿身边完成，让我能够承担起我对她的责任。”

That said, she does have to work during some evenings and weekends but she argues that this frees her to spend “quality time” with her daughter at a less busy moment. If she has to wait in a client’s house for a builder to arrive or a parcel to be delivered, she adds, most do not mind if her daughter comes too and settles down in front of some children’s television.

尽管如此，她的确需要在某些夜晚和周末工作，但她认为，这让她能在不那么忙的时候和女儿度过“宝贵的时间”。如果她不得不在客户家里等待建筑工，或者等待收取快递，大多数客户并不介意她把女儿也带上，一起安静地看点儿童电视节目。

Based in Cambridge, Ms Malagueira is co-founder of Room To Breathe, a small virtual assistant agency that looks after up to 15 clients, most of whom book her time in 10-hour blocks for £280.

马拉盖拉是一家小型虚拟助理机构Room To Breath的联合创始人，公司位于剑桥，为多达15名客户提供服务，大多数客户为10小时的服务时间支付280英镑。

“At the beginning I worried that there was a risk of my career going backwards¹⁶, but I now run my own business and create my own work. I’m not going backwards, I’m going forward.”

“开始的时候，我担心我的职业生涯可能会倒退，但现在我经营自己的企业，创建了自己的事业。我没有倒退，我正在前进。”

While her partner focuses more on administrative tasks, Ms Malagueira specialises in lifestyle needs. “A lot of my clients work long hours in the City and haven’t got time to sort out their home life, so they ask me to do the mundane¹⁷ things like sorting out their insurance, organising birthday parties and booking holidays,” she says.

马拉盖拉的合作伙伴更专注于行政管理工作，而她本人则擅长处理一些生活相关的工作。“我的许多客户在伦敦金融城工作，工作时间很长，没有时间处理家庭生活，所以他们要求我处理一些日常事务，比如处理保险，举办生日宴会，安排假日行程，”她说。

The outsourcing of such tasks reflects a new sensitivity around the use of full-time administrative staff, she suggests.

她暗示，外包这类事务反映了一种关于指派全职行政员工的新的敏感性。

“The number of executive PAs employed in the City has been cut and executives are having to share them with other people, so that makes them reluctant to ask their PA at work to buy a present for their wife. After the financial crisis, all eyes are on City workers, and that makes them nervous about using work resources for personal reasons.”

“金融城里的高管私人助理被削减，高管们不得不和其他人共用助理，这使得他们不太情愿让他们的私人助理为自己的妻子购买礼物。金融危机之后，所有人的眼睛都盯着金融城的人，这让他们对出于个人目的使用工作资源感到紧张。”

Many of Ms Malagueira’s clients are sole traders unwilling¹⁸ to take on a full-time personal assistant. Not all are male. “I’ve worked for a few women too, some with high-powered jobs and families who need someone to make up a short list of nannies or cleaners that they can interview.”

马拉盖拉的许多客户都是个体商人，他们不愿意雇佣全职私人助理。并非所有客户都是男性。“我为几名女性工作过，有一些从事高级职位，她们的家庭需要有人列出保姆或者清洁工的候选名单，供他们选择面试。”

Choosing a career as a virtual assistant does involve some sacrifice, admits Ms Stubblefield. “I don’t get paid as much now as I did when I was a PA, though I save on travel and food.”

斯塔布菲尔德承认，选择虚拟助理这个职业的确牵涉到一些牺牲，“我现在的收入不如我原来任私人助理的时候高，不过我在旅行和食物上花销更少。”

There is another downside to leaving the usual nine-to-five day behind. “Most of my communication is by email so I miss the banter¹⁹ and chat over coffee. But I don’t miss the office politics.”

抛弃朝九晚五的传统生活还有一个缺点。“我大多数沟通都是通过电子邮件，所以我想念喝着咖啡和同事打趣闲聊的日子。但我不想念办公室政治。”