“Our in-office assistant resigned recently, and we desperately need support.”
“We’re scaling our business, and with the labor shortage, we’re having difficulty finding and keeping this position staffed.”
“Given the job market, I am interested in finding a service to work with rather than hiring directly.”
“We have been looking for Executive Assistants for our CEO/President and executive team and cannot find someone willing to stay, and we feel like we have exhausted all our options.”
These are actual quotes from Quickskill’s “contact us” form.
From just one month.
Businesses are struggling—a lot—to hire and retain on-site executive assistants.
If you are having a hard time finding and keeping support for your executive team, you’re not alone. The good news is that it’s way easier than you think to get the support you need if you’re willing to think a little bit outside of the box.
1Why It is Hard to Find Executive Assistants
It is not hard to figure out why executive admins are hard to find.
More than two million administrative assistants have retired or left the field since 2000, and few are entering it. The labor department expects the job market for the role to decline by seven percent per year.
Meanwhile, the United States economy creates more than 240,000 executive-level jobs every year.
Growing demand and shrinking supply explain why it is tough to find executive assistants.
And if you find one, there is this: less than half of executive assistants stay on the job beyond a year, Zippia found.
2The High Cost of Turnover
Turnover is expensive and disruptive for any role in any business. Executives feel the brunt of administrative assistant turnover because it impacts productivity, workload, and quality of life.
Asana surveyed more than 10,000 workers and found that most spend 62 percent of their time “working about work” instead of “working on work.” In other words, administrative tasks like email management, scheduling meetings, searching for information, and updating data take up most of their time. These are the tasks executive assistants did. When an executive is without an admin, they stand to lose 62 percent of their time!
In addition to the four months to hire and train a new assistant, Gallup pegs the financial cost of replacing an employee at 50-200 percent of their salaries.
3How to Find Your Forever Executive Assistant
Your current turnover could be your opportunity to end the costly and frustrating revolving door of executive assistants.
That’s because the combination of technology and growing comfort with remote work means that you can hire remote executive assistants from anywhere in the world. And with managed virtual assistant services, you get a team of managers, dedicated assistants, and trained backups, so you never go a day without support, and you never start over.
Managed virtual assistant service providers hire, train, supervise, and provide career opportunities for virtual assistants in regions of the world where opportunities for meaningful work are scarce. The managed part of the service is what makes it a permanent solution. In addition to placing a dedicated assistant that works with you like any employee service provider:
You also get a trained backup assistant, so you never miss a day of support if your assistant is sick or on holiday, and you never start over if the primary assistant moves on. All your processes are documented documentation to ensure that you never have to train another assistant.
Learn more about what a managed virtual assistant can do here.
4What Tasks Can’t Managed Virtual Assistants Do?
Managed virtual assistants can do any objective, repeatable task. The team learns your style and business over time and can take on tasks requiring more judgment. But they can’t do everything.
The term “virtual assistant” is often used to describe anyone you hire that works remotely for tasks like graphic design, website development, and social media marketing. These roles require specialized skills beyond the scope of managed service providers’ training programs.
Of course, no virtual assistant can perform tasks that require them to be in the office, like making coffee, cleaning the break room, and greeting visitors. But they can order anything to be delivered to your office that is available online.
5How is a Managed Service Different from Other Virtual Assistant Services?
Most virtual assistant services take your requirements and find independent contractors onshore or offshore that look like solid matches. The training, performance management, quality control, and career development are up to you. You will not have a backup in most cases, so if your assistant is absent, you are on your own, and if they quit, you start over just as if an internal employee leaves.
An advantage of managed virtual assistant services for larger organizations looking to support teams of executives is that it scales. Instead of hiring, onboarding, and training assistants one by one, you have access to a partner that can staff your positions with the same training and best practices built in.
6Hire a Company, not an Individual
Quickskill is a managed virtual assistant service with more than a decade of experience supporting executive and executive teams. With Quickskill, you hire a company instead of an individual. We maintain teams of virtual assistants that work in cohorts where they learn and coach one other and build meaningful careers. The opportunity to work side by side, albeit virtually, is much more meaningful and exciting than Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) jobs like customer support and call centers that dominate local markets.
Are you ready to stop executive assistant turnover once and for all without any additional headcount to management? Are you ready to work with someone who loves their support role and sees it as a great career? It’s only an email or phone call away.
Click here to learn more!
