Top Tasks to Delegate to an Executive Assistant
A vital method to enhance productivity for executives in organizations is making proper use of a remote executive assistant.
In this article, we aim to give you a comprehensive understanding of delegation: where it begins, which tasks should be delegated, and how to maintain your workload control by assigning certain responsibilities to your executive assistant.
So, check out this executive assistant task list.
Top Tasks of an Executive Assistant
Let’s explore in more detail the tasks you can delegate to your remote executive assistant without thinking twice.
Email Management
As a busy business owner, you shouldn’t be concerned with managing your inbox. Executive assistants are there to help by sorting through messages quickly and identifying what is most urgent from less important things.
From investor communications to industry newsletters and sales offers, an assistant could sort through your emails daily, ensuring that critical messages get attention on time. Moreover, they can handle less urgent emails and manage actions like unsubscribing from mailing lists that you no longer desire to get.
Reservations
If you travel often and spend many hours looking for accommodations, the greatest deals on plane bookings, refunds, and car rentals, among others, it might be a good moment to think about giving these tasks to an assistant. An assistant can carry out all your reservations and guarantee that your requirements regarding travel and food are fulfilled while optimizing your schedule so you can concentrate on meetings and have some relaxation time.
To-Do List Management
There are many things you CAN do, but most of them, you shouldn’t. The best use of your time is to focus on highly valuable tasks. It’s the responsibility of your assistant to help you manage your to-do list by:
- Helping you identify delegable tasks
- Staying on top of your commitments
- Reminding you of your responsibilities
- Helping you organize the time and the manner in which you finish the tasks
- Keeping your schedule free of new delegable tasks
Personal Errands
This is a delicate line to walk, but some personal tasks can be given to an executive assistant. Make sure you talk about these errands with your admin when hiring them so they are not unexpected. For instance, picking up dry cleaning might be okay for an assistant, but not picking up kids from school. Discussing it is very important in this case.
An EA’s primary role is to support you professionally, but they can also assist with some personal duties within the boundaries of a professional relationship. This would be in line with your professional aspirations and assist in achieving a healthier equilibrium between work and personal life.
Presentation Planning
Preparing presentations is a task that can consume much of your time, but you can easily mark it off your checklist by using an executive assistant. They can aid you in getting ready for any presentation, such as by researching and collecting appropriate details for the content. This involves making slides with visual appeal and arranging presentation materials.
Social media management
Your assistant can also help you manage your social accounts. She can assist with answering simple comments, marking messages for you to reply to later, and assisting in creating and planning posts. Assistants often have a creative history or manage social accounts too.
Your assistant can write the copy for your site, marketing content, and any other written work that represents your company. When they are not the writer themselves, they can proofread and do quality control on what other copywriters produce to make sure it aligns with your company’s language and values.
Report and Research
The senior executives dedicate a good amount of their time to gathering data, making reports and presentations. Having an assistant who can do research for you, whether it be about the background of a client or gathering data for meeting preparation, will surely lighten your load.
Meetings and Appointments
Another task that requires more attention than it should, is organizing appointments and arranging meetings. Continuously updating your calendar, searching for available slots to fix meetings, re-scheduling former set-up appointments are monotonous tasks which truly don’t need your attention and can be managed by an assistant.
Benefits of Delegating Tasks to an Executive Assistant
To begin, it is beneficial for you and your business that you delegate tasks to an executive assistant. This will allow you to focus on the strategic aspects of your work and devote more time towards critical responsibilities such as creating new business strategies, overseeing projects as well managing relationships with stakeholders.
Here are more benefits that come with delegating tasks.
Improved Work-Life Balance
Many leaders are overwhelmed by the mounting list of tasks they bear. In certain instances, teams have been reduced due to layoffs which has led to leaders having to take on extra responsibilities that they feel there isn’t enough time to teach others about.
However, when these leaders allocate their duties to an assistant, it helps in freeing more time for the most crucial tasks related to managing a business. They also make additional room for self-care, hobbies and more time to spend with their families.
Improved Productivity
In nearly every business, managing time effectively is difficult. Business executives have many tasks that can change from day to day. Delegation lets you arrange tasks and duties in a priority order. By giving less important duties to your assistant, you can concentrate on your most significant ones and be more productive as a result.
More Focus
Leaders and managers, being ambitious by nature, frequently undertake more tasks than they can personally handle. The dread of not delivering good work leads them to resist giving tasks away. When people in managerial positions are handling multiple important things simultaneously, there is a possibility that errors might happen more often. In this case, delegating tasks to the right individuals such as an executive assistant is essential. It provides business leaders the chance to be more focused on planning and organizing matters.
Better Results
Managers can improve productivity by delegating tasks they don’t need to perform themselves. In this way, they free themselves of the tasks their attention isn’t much needed and can focus on those where their unique expertise is required.
Besides, delegation is a method of aiding in an employee’s development, and this ultimately brings better business results such as increased efficiency, business expansion, service to customers and productivity.
Develops Creativity and Skills
If leaders give team members the freedom to handle tasks assigned to them in their own style, they are actually empowering their team and providing a creative license. This creates opportunities to increase the motivation of employees that would affect the future of both parties. When you trust your employees to do something, they will turn the favor by giving their best, ultimately impacting how skillful and creative they become.
