Life as an executive can be very hectic, with many responsibilities to track, meetings to lead, and hires to oversee. There aren’t enough hours in a day to get every task done. And the burdens executives face are increased by the barrage of menial tasks such as scheduling, recording meetings, data entry, checking emails, and other clerical responsibilities. With mounting pressure, executives should consider getting help to take hold of these low-value tasks to focus on the more laborious ones.
There are several signs that show it’s time to hire an executive assistant to make life easier. EAs are known for their organizational and multitasking capabilities, keeping executives on track with their schedules and budgets while gaining valuable experience that benefits company productivity. The following eight instances are moments that made executives realize that the time to hire an EA has come.
1. You Scheduled Yourself in Concurrent Meetings
[Image link: https://unsplash.com/photos/s9CC2SKySJM ]
As an executive, you’re spending 80% of your day attending several types of meetings, whether they’re client meetings, upcoming meetings, or board meetings. You’re being pulled away to different situations and locations all the time, necessitating optimized scheduling practices to help you keep track of things. Because there’s so much to navigate, the potential for scheduling yourself in two or three consecutive meetings is always there, leaving you with little breathing room.
When you hire an executive assistant, you get someone who can use scheduling software and keep track of all your meetings. Plus, the assistant can create templates for calendar invitations, create a trustworthy routine and prioritize the meetings by importance to avoid scheduling conflicts.
2. Your Email and Voicemail Boxes are Out of Control
Executives get a lot of emails, potentially more than the average of 200 emails in a professional inbox and over 120 new emails daily. With daily responsibilities, there’s less time or patience to read emails, and understandably so.
Delegating email reading and organizing duties to an executive assistant is wise, ensuring you don’t disrupt your day checking emails that, for the most part, aren’t relevant to you. Also, EAs can check your work phone, clear out the voicemail box and answer more of the calls you typically miss daily.
3. Business is Slowing Down, More Focus Needed On Business Development
Because your attention span is pulled in different directions, it affects productivity and confuses your teams, who need your reassurance. Having an executive assistant by your side allows you to focus on more labor-intensive tasks critical to furthering business development. The EAs can take care of the menial, low-value tasks while you ensure you’re delivering the best possible business outcomes to grow your organization.
4. Paperwork Has Become the Bane of Your Existence
[Image link: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-looking-through-documents-at-workplace-7129713/ ]
In the corporate world, dealing with endless documentation can be frustrating. And many of the documents that are around could easily be stored on the cloud or kept in a file on a laptop. Maintaining a paperless office comes with its benefits, including better organization and increased sustainability. But, you’ll still need help to organize your documents using a paperless system.
When you hire an executive assistant, the EA can keep all your documents in the right files so they can be retrieved easily or store them online in a cloud to keep them organized.
5. Your Work-Life Balance is Non-Existent
Many executives have been working remotely throughout the pandemic, trying to balance home and work responsibilities. Because there are too many tasks to handle, executives spend more hours than necessary trying to get work done, having little time to relax or spend time with family.
Executive assistants help executives master their time management by taking away the distracting tasks, thus allowing executives to have more normal, fluid workdays and enjoy time away from work.
6. Too Much Stress, Leading to Erratic Decision-Making
Too much responsibility each day leads to an accumulation of stress. Mental health in the workplace has come into increased focus in recent times, and a compromised mental state leads to erratic decision-making that can derail your company.
Delegating duties to an executive assistant allows you to share some of the decision-making load and calm your mental state to make more informed and logical decisions.
7. You’re Lacking the Support System To Get Through The Day
Executive assistants can be an additional buffer for executives who need to express their thoughts or frustrations during a work day, helping them to get by. Having an executive assistant with strong people skills is a big plus.
8. You Feel More Like an Assistant Than An Executive
Because you’re stuck with so many clerical tasks, you feel more like an assistant than a leader, taking time to do tasks that are seemingly beneath you. An executive assistant allows you to focus on the most impactful business decisions while giving you that added feeling of power and confidence to lead your organization.
KangarooStar is your one-hop stop for data-driven job matching, career development, hiring trends, and professional assessment. Learn more about how you can attract the best candidate for the job!
