Many workers feel, every day, as though they simply cannot get enough work done. Business owners and executives, in particular, often struggle to keep up with the daily grind. Could an online administrative assistant help you get back time?
WHAT IS AN ONLINE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT?
An online administrative assistant completes many of the same duties as an in-person assistant, but without needing to connect with you in person. An online administrative assistant supports the management team and staff of an organization by taking care of vital tasks that frequently take up time throughout the business day. Their presence frees up those individuals to take on other tasks and manage other responsibilities each day.
HOW ONLINE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS HELP YOU SAVE TIME
An online administrative assistant offers a number of advantages, including taking on many tasks that can free up your time each day.
1. EMAIL INBOX MANAGEMENT
Your email inbox frequently consumes far too much time out of your day. The average professional, in fact, spends 28% of the workday on email-related tasks, from clearing out spam to responding to email queries from customers, coworkers, and other industry professionals. Many of those tasks, however, you don’t have to take care of yourself. You don’t have to read through those meeting reminders when the meeting is already in your calendar, nor do you have to be the one to delete the ongoing spam in your inbox. An online administrative assistant can take on dealing with that task for you, notifying you about any emails that genuinely need your attention and taking care of the ones that can be handled for you. In many cases, that may include sending off replies to emails that don’t need your personal attention or scheduling appointments for you.
2. CALENDAR MANAGEMENT AND SCHEDULING
Let’s face it: it doesn’t take much for your calendar to get out of control. Where do you have time to fit in that appointment or meeting? Can you fit in a call at X time? An online administrative assistant can take care of managing your scheduling for you. They can set up appointments, take a look at what time you have available, and make sure that you’re prepared to connect with clients, coworkers, and industry colleagues when needed.
3. DATA ENTRY
Many employees across many positions spend a large chunk of their time each day handling basic data entry. You need the data in place in order to complete other tasks, from running the right programs to developing a better understanding of the data itself. Someone has to put it in.
It doesn’t have to be you.
An online administrative assistant can take over data entry for you, freeing up your time to focus on analyzing and manipulating that data. For many professionals, this means significantly freeing up their time each day.
4. RESEARCH
Before you can complete many of your job tasks, you need to do a little research. For some workers, that might mean going on social media and listening to the conversation and interacting with customers to see what they need and want most from your brand. For others, it could mean checking out what your competitors offer or how they choose to handle certain tasks.
Looking at the information broken down takes just a few minutes. Gathering the raw data, on the other hand, could leave you spending hours behind your computer screen or even outside the office.
An online administrative assistant can keep up with much of that research for you. Your assistant can explore social media pages, visit competitor websites, and even keep up with the
latest information in your industry so that you have a better idea of what’s going on.
5. PROCEDURAL IMPROVEMENTS
Often, you’re too close to a problem to see how to fix it. An online administrative assistant can take a look at your existing processes and procedures and help refine them. Through those procedural improvements, you may streamline communications, improve the way you do business, or make it easier to handle your daily work tasks. Many people note that their administrative assistants have the training and experience needed to streamline processes that they didn’t realize were redundant or excessive.
6. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Your online administrative assistant can take on many of your regular project management tasks. From keeping up with who has what skills and assigning roles appropriately to making sure that everyone has the tools they need to take care of those responsibilities, an online administrative assistant can go a long way toward making project management easier, freeing up your time to complete your own roles within that project.
An online administrative assistant can take over many of the activities on your plate each day that suck down your time. Thanks to your assistant’s help, you can free yourself up to take on the roles that only you can handle. Ultimately, this streamlines your workday and makes it easier for you to reduce stress while handling your daily work responsibilities.