How to Build Remote Team Capacity That Works When People Are Out

You hire a VA. Let’s say they work 40 hours a week.

You think “Great, I have 40 hours of work capacity now.”

But you don’t.

Because your VA isn’t a robot. They have meetings with you. They need to track their time, create invoices, and communicate about projects. They take breaks. 

They need time to understand new tasks.

So that 40-hour week? It’s really more like 30-35 hours of actual productive work.

Already you’re starting behind where you thought you were.

Then your VA takes a sick day. Or their internet goes out (happens a lot in the Philippines, especially during typhoon season). Or they have a family emergency.

Now you have zero capacity that day. And all that work still needs to get done.

So you either work late yourself, or deadlines slip, or you frantically try to figure out who else can help.

This is how most people run their remote teams. Crisis to crisis.

There’s a better way.

The Three Things You Actually Need

Think of your team capacity in three parts.

Your baseline team. That’s the people who do the regular work every day. The ones handling your customer emails, managing your social media, doing your admin tasks. Whatever it is you hired them for.

Built-in breathing room. This is the part most people skip. You need your team running at like 70-80% capacity, not 100%. That extra 20-30% isn’t wasted time. It’s your safety net for when things don’t go according to plan (which is always).

Backup plans. What happens when someone can’t work? Who covers for them? This needs to be figured out before you need it, not in the middle of a crisis.

The difference between teams that work smoothly and teams that constantly stress everyone out usually comes down to these three things.

Here’s How I’d Calculate Real Capacity

Let’s say you have three VAs working 40 hours each. That’s 120 hours total, right?

Wrong.

Start tracking actual productive work time. Not “time at computer.” Not “hours logged.” Actual time spent on deliverable work.

Here’s what a typical 40-hour week actually looks like:

About 2 hours goes to meetings and check-ins with you. Another hour to administrative stuff like tracking time and creating invoices. Break time (which they should take). Time at the start of each day getting focused. Time switching between different tasks.

Add it all up and you get somewhere between 30-35 productive hours per person.

So your three VAs? You really have about 90-105 hours of capacity, not 120.

This is why you feel like you don’t have enough people even though the math said you should.

Calculate your real capacity first. Then plan around that number.

Why You Need Breathing Room (Even Though It Feels Wasteful)

This is the part that feels wrong at first.

You’re paying for 90 hours of capacity. But you’re only scheduling 65-70 hours of actual work.

Feels like you’re wasting money, right?

You’re not.

That extra 20-25 hours is what keeps everything from falling apart.

Some tasks take longer than expected. That two-hour project becomes three hours. That “quick” client revision takes half a day. With breathing room, these things don’t immediately turn into missed deadlines.

Someone gets sick. With breathing room, the rest of the team can absorb their critical work without everyone working overtime.

A client has an urgent request outside the normal plan. With breathing room, you can say yes without derailing everything else.

The breathing room is the difference between a team that runs smoothly and a team where everyone’s always stressed and rushing.

I’ve seen it both ways. Teams running at 100% capacity all the time produce lower quality work, burn out faster, and have more mistakes. Even though they’re “more efficient” on paper.

Teams with breathing room do better work, stay longer, and handle surprises without drama.

The Overtime Trap

Some employers try to use overtime as their buffer.

Work gets busy? Just have people work extra hours. Pay them overtime. Problem solved.

This works for about two weeks.

Then it becomes expensive and miserable for everyone.

First, the money part. If you’re following US labor rules (or Philippine rules, which are similar), overtime is 1.5x the regular rate. That adds up fast.

Second, the compliance part. You have to track and pay for ALL hours worked. Including the hours your VA worked because they felt behind and didn’t tell you. That’s still work you’re legally required to pay for.

Third, the burnout part. Regular overtime means you don’t have enough people. Your team is basically working extra just to keep things from falling apart. That’s not sustainable.

Occasional overtime for a real spike? Fine. That makes sense.

Regular overtime as part of your normal operations? That’s a red flag that your capacity planning is broken.

Cross-Training Is Your Best Backup Plan

Here’s what happens when you don’t cross-train anyone.

Your customer support VA gets sick. Nobody else knows how to access the support system or how you like responses handled. 

So support tickets pile up until they’re back.

You end up with single points of failure everywhere.

Cross-training fixes this.

It means each VA has their main thing they’re responsible for, but they also know how to do at least one or two other things at a basic level.

Make a simple chart. Who can do what. Update it every few months.

This takes time upfront. Your VA spending five hours learning a backup skill is five hours not doing their main work. 

But it’s an investment that pays off the first time someone’s out and work still gets done smoothly.

Plan for Internet and Power Outages

Typhoons knock out power and internet. Sometimes for days. This isn’t rare. It happens.

If your entire team is in one area and a typhoon hits, you could lose all capacity at once.

Here’s how to plan for it:

Internet backup. A lot of Filipino VAs have pocket WiFi or mobile hotspot as backup. Some employers pay a monthly stipend for this. .

Power backup. Harder to solve. But knowing which team members have generators or battery backup helps you route critical work to them during power outages..

What This Actually Looks Like When It Works

Here’s the practical steps.

✅Track your current capacity for two weeks.

✅Measure the work coming in.

✅Pick your target. .

✅Make your skills matrix. 

✅Document your emergency plans.

✅Review quarterly

Teams with good capacity planning don’t panic when someone gets sick.

They don’t regularly miss deadlines because of surprise volume.

They don’t burn people out with constant overtime.

They don’t panic-hire when busy then lay people off when slow.

Work just flows. Even when individuals are out. Because it’s designed to flow that way.

Busy periods get handled with planned capacity increases, not crisis mode.

Team members have enough breathing room to do quality work instead of constantly rushing.

The investment you make in proper planning, buffers, cross-training, and backups pays off in stability, consistent quality, and being able to grow without constant drama.

That’s the difference.