If you are a business that employs administrative professionals please read this post. I promise it will have a significant impact on your bottom line!
I’ve just spent the week talking to assistants from some of the world’s largest businesses for my latest research project. Not one of them were using their administrative professionals properly.
I also had a business contact me to ask for help to work out how to set KPIs for their assistants based on volume of work, rather than quality.
Every single assistant that I have spoken to this week felt that their business saw what they were doing as a job and not as a career. And for most, there was no training available and no career opportunities.
What it boils down to is that we are still treating administrative professionals as a resource rather than as talent and it’s costing your business money.
Let me ask you one key question. Why does your business employ assistants?
And let’s be clear, it is the business that employs them and not the executives that they look after.
No, it’s not to do the things the executive doesn’t want to do or to get the grunt work done, or to offer ‘support’.
It’s to give your executives back time. To maximise every hour of their time, so that the business gets the most bang for their buck from their executives’ salaries.
And when that is done properly, it drops directly to the bottom line.
If you want to understand how to utilise your administrative staff properly, one of the best places to start is to look at the Global Skills Matrix.
It provides a career framework and explains exactly what skills, behaviours and tasks you should expect from your assistants at each level.
The most common reaction has been ‘I’d never thought about using our assistants that way but I can see that we are missing a trick by not doing so’
Are you so busy doing what you have always done that you are missing the potential impact of your administrative staff on the bottom line?
When their potential is harnessed effectively, these professionals become valuable assets that drive the success and efficiency of the entire business.
Simple economics says that the person on the lower salary should be doing the things that both of you can do, freeing the executive up to maximise their salary by doing more of the things only they can do.
There are other benefits too. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it and the matrix gives you the tools to do that. You will be able to set expectation for performance management purposes.
Isn’t what every business wants is to have a world-class administrative function, underpinning what the stakeholders are doing?
And best of all it’s a free resource.
I am happy to speak to anyone that wants to contact me to talk you through it, free of charge. I have committed to speaking to as many companies as possible this year.
Download a copy of the Global Skills Matrix.
