Should You Hire an In-Person or Virtual Executive Assistant?
Have you found that you're ready to elevate your work with the help of an Executive Assistant but are now left wondering whether an in-person or virtual Executive Assistant is right for you?
An Executive Assistant serves as a key asset to any high-performing leader, helping them elevate their focus to their highest priorities and enhance their impact. The right Executive Assistant will act as a strategic gatekeeper and proactively find solutions to optimize your day-to-day work. The search for an Executive Assistant often leads to two options: a traditional, in-person EA or a virtual Executive Assistant.
Executive Assistants, whether working on-site or remotely, can have a tremendous impact on how an executive or a business performs. An EA elevates the productivity of high-performing leaders and can take on the detailed tasks that often pull leaders from their most important work. Regardless of where they are located, they handle a number of tasks that keep the business running smoothly, from calendar and email management to event planning and operations support. There are a few factors though that separate whether an in-person or a virtual Executive Assistant is right for the job. To determine what the best fit is for you, we’ve outlined some key points to consider.
The Task At Hand
The most important thing to consider when deciding between an in-house and virtual Executive Assistant is which areas you need the most amount of support in. Is it more routine office administration tasks, like answering phones, meeting management, and agenda maintenance? Being on-site can certainly have its advantages, as it offers someone who is constantly in front of the executive or team to support their everyday needs.
In addition to key tasks like email and project management, an in-person Executive Assistant can take on unexpected and basic tasks, like setting up a conference room for a meeting, printing copies, and welcoming visitors. If you need an Executive Assistant whose responsibilities overlap with those that traditionally fall within the job description of a receptionist or office manager, an onsite EA will offer the most benefit.
Conversely, having a virtual Executive Assistant who is laser-focused on tasks that can be completed remotely ensures that there is no blurring of lines when there is a need for high-level support. Virtual EAs can also coordinate strategically with disparate parts of your organization, which can make a huge impact for larger and geographically spread out teams. And as an added bonus: hiring a virtual EA helps you avoid significant overhead and personnel costs that you’d otherwise take on with an in-house assistant.
The Flexibility Factor
Many leaders find that they need a certain amount of flexibility within their day, and that extends to the support team behind them. A virtual Executive Assistant is able to offer this benefit by working closely with their executive to determine how and when they can fill in the gaps on an ongoing basis. At 33Vincent, our model is meant to scale up and down as needed, and we are able to tap into our extended network of EAs should you have an unexpected and immediate increased need of support.
The Productivity Benefit
Many business leaders worry that employees working from home do not actually spend their time working. However, after the recent pandemic shutdowns, many executives have found that the exact opposite is true.
Now that we have a year’s worth of hard data from various industries, it’s clear that many employees are happier and more productive when working remotely. A study from Stanford found that remote workers’ performance increased by an amazing 13%!
Yet another study showed 71% of remote workers were happy at their job, compared to 55% of on-site workers, and we already know from various studies that happy workers are also inherently more productive too!
In fact, the difference was so dramatic many large companies have moved permanently to working remotely! Here is a mind-blowing list of all the major companies to permanently offer remote work.
This is important information to consider when deciding whether to hire an in-person or virtual Executive Assistant. Although actually going to work has its benefits, we can now clearly see from data that remote work does too: an increase of anywhere from 13% to 30% in productivity.
Want to increase your overall business productivity? Check out our 10 Key Ways to Improve Your Business Productivity here!
The Time-Cost Benefit
Any employee who is expected to work during a set number of hours in-person may find that many of those hours spent in their office are unproductive. The Muse found that workers spent more than 23% of their time socializing with coworkers, and spent three hours of their workday on non-work-related activities (not including scheduled breaks and lunch).
In fact, a recent study by Mercer, a workplace benefits consulting firm, shows that 94% of participants said that productivity was the same or even higher when working remotely. Travel time is also a key factor, as Americans continue to hit records in how much time they spend commuting to work. Additionally, the time that it costs to hire and train an in-person EA can be costly and time-consuming, while a virtual Executive Assistant often has the support of a greater community of other assistants.
When considering the benefit of time spent and cost for said time, a virtual Executive Assistant can offer a clear advantage by spending their time on the clock completely dedicated to your business.
Work-Life Balance
“Work-life balance” has become a hot-button topic over the past decade, as everyone wants to find the magical formula. Finding an equilibrium between our jobs and our personal life, however, differs for everyone and is an important consideration on what type of Executive Assistant you need. Having the right environment at home can depend on who else is there, as many people found out when quarantining in 2020.
For some, spouses, kids, pets, or roommates can be a barrier to their productivity, and many were down the days until they return to the office. For others, the shift to working from home provided the balance that they needed to enjoy both their home life and their work life. For those that found having the ability to work remotely improved their day-to-day, a virtual Executive Assistant might be the right match.
For some, working remotely creates challenges in learning how to find work-life balance. When your home is also your office, it’s easy to blur the lines and work too much. The key is to create a set of rules that put structure into your day and help define work versus personal time. Starting the day with a morning routine that doesn’t include work, and scheduling breaks throughout the day to complete non-work-related tasks such as laundry or a workout can ensure that you glean the benefits of working from home. Additionally, setting specific office hours where you are focused on work–and your co-workers know that they can reach is another strategy that can ease the struggle between work-life balance when working remotely.
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