How can an executive assistant add value to your business

When you hire an executive assistant, you know they will alleviate some of the work burdens you carry, but how can an executive assistant add value to your business beyond taking on a project here and there? Executive assistants enhance your productivity, streamline company operations, act as project managers, and much more. 

Delegate these 10 tasks to your EA and start working smarter.

Table of contents:

• Enhancing productivity
• Streamlining operations
• Supporting decision-making
• Maintaining confidentiality and discretion
• Improving communication
• Project management and coordination
• Enhancing partner and client relations
• Fostering a positive work environment

How can an executive assistant add value to your business? 

If you’ve never had an executive assistant before, you may think their scope of responsibilities is hyper-focused on your needs as the top executive. The reality is that outstanding executive assistants make an impact on the entire organization. If you’re wondering how an executive assistant can add value to your entire business, keep reading. 

We have grouped EAs’ impacts into eight buckets, so you have a broader understanding of what an EA can do for you and your company.

Enhancing productivity

One of the main goals – if not the ultimate goal – of an executive assistant, is to make sure you’re successful in your role. That means getting rid of any obstacles, minimizing pain points, and ensuring you’re focused on high-impact work. EAs have many ways to help you be more productive every day, but the most consistent ones are:

• Calendar management: Executives tend to have an overwhelming amount of meetings. Entire days may be completely packed with back-to-back meetings; in some cases, meetings might overlap with each other, making it impossible for the executive to attend each one of them. On top of meeting overload, a new problem arises.Attending all the meetings you’re invited to leaves little to no time for focus work and even less time for breaks. Executive assistants often perform a calendar rehaul, become gatekeepers for your calendar, and guarantee that you spend more time on deep work and less time on unnecessary meetings.

• Email management: Managing your email can become a big nuisance. If you’re expecting an answer to something important, you may find yourself switching contexts between what you should be doing and checking your email over and over again. Delegating email management to your executive assistant is the perfect way to get rid of interruptions.They triage your inbox, answer emails on your behalf, and only flag truly urgent ones for you to take action. Having one less recurring to-do on your list makes you more productive than you know.

• Meeting support: Have you ever been invited to a meeting without even knowing the purpose of your being there? The higher you are in the company, the more meeting invites you’ll receive. Even though some of them are truly important, not all of them require your presence. An executive assistant is the perfect ally to make every meeting worth attending.They ensure there’s an agenda beforehand, find out if it’s relevant for you to attend (and decline if there’s no real reason for you to be there), take notes throughout the meeting, assign action items to team members, and follow up with them to ensure completion.

Streamlining operations

Executive assistants are highly analytical individuals who can help you simplify business operations. They can implement automation tools, standardize workflows, and create documentation to establish best practices and ensure consistency. Some of our EAs have become the right hands of their company’s head of operations, not only making them more productive but especially having a global impact on the way the company works. 

Supporting decision-making

Making decisions can be stressful and difficult, especially if you are the one with the last word. Having an executive assistant also means you no longer have to go through the most difficult times all by yourself. 

Imagine you need to let go of a couple of team members or that there’s been a budget cut, and you now need to optimize the last dime. Your EA can create a performance tracker for all your team members to help you make an informed decision and put together a financial report to see what makes the most sense financially. 

Whatever the case may be, your EA will support the decision-making process in more ways than one.

Maintaining confidentiality and discretion

Executive assistants are essential in managing confidential information with the highest level of discretion and security. They ensure that sensitive data is handled carefully, protecting the privacy and interests of the organization and its stakeholders. 

Viva executive assistants have gained their executives’ trust to a point where their leaders feel confident enough to share their credit card details and family information. Building this level of trust takes time, but once you reach it, you immediately see the value your EA can add to your professional and personal life. 

Improving communication

Having an executive assistant will benefit your communications in many ways. They act as a bridge between you and the rest of the team and make sure that everyone who needs to talk to you, gets a quick answer without even getting you involved most of the time. Plus, if you have already delegated email management, they will be on top of your inbox, so much so that no email will be left unanswered and all your communications will be up to date every day.

Project management and coordination

Your productivity is your executive assistant’s main priority, but their impact goes far beyond that. Some of our Viva executive assistants have acted as project managers for their executives. That means they won’t only make sure you allocate time to each project, but they will also ensure your team members and direct reports are on track with each of their responsibilities. Leveraging your EA as a project manager will move your entire team forward. 

Enhancing client and partner relations

Some of the executives we support have a common priority: their clients. If you’re like them, you also put client meetings above all else and prioritize networking chats with potential customers over many other tasks. 

Having an executive assistant help you maintain client and partner relations is going to enhance those connections. They can put pre-meeting briefings together, schedule meetings, follow up with prospects, and nurture those relationships consistently.

Fostering a positive work environment

Executive assistants have a privileged point of view: by being part of the team, they have visibility on the status of team morale, and by working so closely with you, they know all about leadership’s expectations. That’s why they are the perfect team member to keep the pulse of team morale and performance. 

Your EA can spot a detriment to team satisfaction and flag it on time so you can make all the necessary adjustments. Plus, they can enrich your company’s culture by establishing new and fun ways for team members to interact with each other. Creating weekly trivia games, making room for informal chats, and sending birthday cards are just a few ways our EAs nurture a warm organizational culture

As you can see, there’s much more to the executive assistant role than simply delegating administrative tasks. Your executive assistant can become your ally on every front. They can make you more productive, have a company-wide impact, and even help you become a better leader every day. 

If bringing an executive assistant to your team sounds like a natural next step, chat with our team. They will answer all your questions and find the best EA for your needs.