Top 10 Tasks You Should Delegate to an Executive Assistant
Many business leaders beginning a relationship with their first Executive Assistant run into this common problem: what can I delegate? With such a wide variety of what you can delegate to an assistant, it’s often hard to choose. Some responsibilities seem too big, and others seem too small. To help make the transition a bit easier, we’ve put together this list of the top ten tasks leaders should delegate to an Executive Assistant—and perhaps more importantly—why.
Many of these tasks are standard, recurring responsibilities that often take up too much time in an executive’s day—but can easily be handed off to someone else. While these tasks are administrative in nature, it’s important to note that there is a difference between an Executive Assistant and an administrative assistant. EAs can work autonomously and with more responsibility, providing critical assistance in strategic support and project management. As such, many of the tasks that should be delegated to Executive Assistants are more focused on the management of a project or process, such as event planning, meeting management, and project management itself.
What Can Be Delegated to an Executive Assistant
Email Inbox Management
Calendar Management
Meeting Management
Event Planning
Project Management
Digital Organization
CRM Management
Travel Management
Expense Management
Gift Giving
Email Inbox Management
Let’s start with your inbox, as it’s one of the biggest pain points we see for busy executives. Adobe’s annual email usage study shows that American workers spend an average of 3-5 hours every day on email. By outsourcing your inbox to an executive assistant, even just partially, you will add invaluable hours back into your day, allowing you to spend more time focusing on your most important work.
An experienced EA will ensure your inbox is automatically organized, making the time you do spend on email as short and as efficient as possible. EAs can also “tee up” responses for some emails so you spend minimal brain power and time responding. And for those emails where you do need to provide input or complete an action, an Executive Assistant will provide a daily digest with only the most vital information so you can quickly focus on what’s most important.
Even those executives without dedicated EA support can benefit from 33Vincent’s team of EAs’ expertise in email inbox management with our new service called Inbox Reset! This one-time inbox overhaul takes about two weeks to complete and helps busy executives maximize time spent in their inbox—sounds delightful, right?
Calendar Management
Partnering with an Executive Assistant to create and operationalize your ideal week can help you easily ward off "tyranny of the urgent" and allow you to focus on what is truly important. By delegating the management of your calendar to an Executive Assistant, you will free up time spent keeping track of your schedule, immediately”adding hours back into your day. Talk about magic!
Executive Assistants will also take on the mundane task of scheduling events, meetings, and phone calls, and use that calendar to bolster your overall productivity. By knowing your preferences, what times are optimal for you to take meetings and calls, they can handle all of the annoying back and forth to nail down an appointment time. Plus, they serve as gatekeepers so your boundaries are protected and you can maintain a healthy work/life balance.
Not only can EAs schedule appointments, but they can also prevent the scheduling of appointments, too. EAs know your priorities and can schedule your calendar to reflect that through work blocks and email breaks. By enlisting an assistant to schedule your week to maximize your focus, the simple schedule becomes an effective tool for boosting your efficiency and you’ll find those hours that you never knew you had!
Meeting Management
Speaking of keeping you focused, how about focused meetings? So many leaders can relate to leaving a meeting wondering, “what did we even accomplish?” Harvard Business Review found executives spend an astonishing 23 hours per week in meetings alone. When an assistant is involved in the meeting planning process, they use strategic gatekeeping to pleasantly deny poorly planned meetings, and provide proper preparation for the meetings that are necessary—maximizing the time you invest in them.
One way they do this is by asking the right questions to determine the meeting’s goal and making sure the right people are in the room (or Zoom screen) to accomplish it. They will ensure legwork work is done before the meeting, such as the review of key documents or brainstorming, so that everyone comes prepared to hit the ground running. Executive Assistants can also support meeting management by creating and sending agendas ahead of time so that everyone stays on track while in the meeting.
Event Planning
Not only can EAs support focused meetings, they can also help plan stellar events. Leveraging their same ability to ask smart questions to determine an event’s purpose, they can then lean in to support so many areas of event planning.
One of these areas include researching vendors. Knowing the event purpose and budget, Executive Assistants are experts at finding vendors to fulfill all of your event’s needs. Plus, their excellent communication skills give way to top-notch communication with the selected vendors and with those inside your organization as well, so everyone is on track to achieve the goals for the event.
There’s a myriad of details involved in hosting an event. Enter your Executive Assistant who can keep track of these details, including, but not limited to, attendee RSVPs, meal preferences, travel plans, and budget tracking. By delegating the details to your EA, you can rest assured knowing the information is organized so all parties involved are aware of all of the “who’s, what’s, and when’s” associated with an event.
Project Management
Because of their unique skillset and ability to build plans, Executive Assistants are experts at project management.
EAs are excellent organizers and communicators, two key attributes for ensuring a successful project. They are also great connectors, knowing who to contact for what, which can help ensure that all parts of a project are accounted for and assigned accordingly. And because of their position, they often have inside knowledge about the inner workings and goals of an organization and will easily identify gaps and paint points—as well as the solutions to resolve them.
Digital Organization
A recent study found that workers spend an average of 45 minutes a day searching for information they need to do their jobs—talk about wasted time! By enlisting your Executive Assistant’s support to reduce digital clutter and practice digital minimalism, you can improve your productivity through better device speeds, more visually appealing workspaces, and a clear path to get what you need.
Examples of areas that an assistant can organize include:
Your desktop: A cloud-based file management system is safer, easier to access, and can help cut down on duplicate or unnecessary files.
Your passwords: Always having to click that “forget your password” button? Delegating password management to your assistant can ensure everything is tracked and accounted for.
Miscellaneous notes: Do you have notes and business cards stored here, there and everywhere? A digital solution such as Evernote is a great way to keep everything centralized, and an assistant can help create a system that works for you in your preferred tool.
CRM Management
Just like your files, if you find yourself always hunting for the contact information for someone in your network on your phone, in your email, Rolodex or even a stray business card stuffed in your wallet or purse, you need an Executive Assistant to bring some organization in your life.
Depending on your needs, you might require an advanced CRM solution to keep track of contacts, or you might even be able to accomplish what you need with a simple and free tool like Airtable.
Regardless of your goals, your EA can help support you in this area by helping you to identify the right tool for your needs, create a system, and maintain it!
Travel Management
Sure, making travel plans sounds easy. But travel management is more nuanced than just booking flights and hotels! Executive Assistants add a special flair to travel management through their strategic planning skills, so this is a great area to delegate to an Executive Assistant.
When they are aware of your preferences, an EA will consider all the details—from simple things like your dining preferences—to important details, like what hospitals accept your insurance in case of an emergency. They will use their proactivity to create a travel plan for you and wrap it all together in a cohesive itinerary. By delegating all of these details to an assistant, you will save a vast amount of time and energy. Not only that, you’ll also have a smooth trip that fulfills your professional goals AND your personal goals as well.
Expense Management
One low-hanging fruit that is easily delegated to an Executive Assistant is the management of your expenses. Ever feel like you’re spending hours catching up on expenses each month, tracking down every receipt, recording it, and submitting your report? This is a task that not only can be delegated to an assistant, but can also be done more efficiently as they can set up a more streamlined submittal system--whether it’s taking photos of your receipts through an app or loading them to the cloud--your EA can keep track of every expense as it happens.
You’ll actually be able to meet your organization’s expense deadlines— no more pesky reminders when the deadline has come and gone!
Gift Giving
Not only are EAs excellent at research, finding a myriad of gift options within a set budget, but because they are intimately familiar with personal preferences, they are adept at finding just the right gift for the recipient.
Whether it is a birthday gift for your niece or a thank you gift for a client, an EA will wow you and the gift recipient!
Our EAs come with years of gift giving experience, we have a treasure trove of suggestions that you can have on hand for when you need a last minute gift.
How To Delegate - A Fee Guide
Hopefully, this list has started turning your gears as to which tasks you’re ready to hand off to your EA. The actual process of delegation can be difficult for many leaders who are hesitant to release control—but remember, just because you’re good at a task doesn’t mean you’re the one who should be doing it!
Here is a very helpful How to DelegateTemplate to guide you through the process of delegation. Get ready to focus your time on what matters most!
And if you don’t have an Executive Assistant but think you would benefit from having someone to support you in these tasks, let’s talk! We’d love to get you matched with a high-caliber virtual assistant so you, too, can benefit from their tremendous skills.
33Vincent has many other resources to help you maximize your time and communication with your executive assistant.
