"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 Prialto'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.
Why It is Hard to Find Executive Assistants
It is not difficult to understand why executive administrators 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 this role to decline by seven percent annually.
Meanwhile, the United States economy creates more than 240,000 executive-level jobs every year.
The growing demand and shrinking supply explain why it is challenging 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.
The High Cost of Turnover
Turnover is expensive and disruptive for any role in any business. Executives often bear the brunt of administrative assistant turnover, as it affects productivity, workload, and overall 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 such as email management, scheduling meetings, searching for information, and updating data consume the majority of their time. These are the tasks that executive assistants typically perform. When an executive is without an admin, they stand to lose 62% of their time.
In addition to the four months required to hire and train a new assistant, Gallup estimates the financial cost of replacing an employee to be 50-200 percent of their annual salary.
How 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. With managed virtual assistant services, you get a team of managers, dedicated assistants, and trained backups, ensuring you never go a day without support and never have to 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 who 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 to ensure that you never have to train another assistant.
Learn more about what a managed virtual assistant can do here.
What Tasks Can't Managed Virtual Assistants Do?
Managed virtual assistants can do any objective, repeatable task. The team learns about your style and business over time and can take on tasks that require more judgment. But they can’t do everything.
The term "virtual assistant" is often used to describe anyone you hire who works remotely on tasks such as 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. However, they can order anything available online to be delivered to your office.
How is a Managed Service Different from Other Virtual Assistant Services?
Most virtual assistant services take your requirements and find independent contractors, either onshore or offshore, that appear to be 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 will be on your own, and if they quit, you will 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.
Hire a Company, not an Individual
Prialto is a managed virtual assistant service with more than a decade of experience supporting executive teams. With Prialto, you hire a company instead of an individual. We maintain teams of virtual assistants who work in cohorts, where they learn from and coach one another, building meaningful careers. The opportunity to work side by side, albeit virtually, is much more meaningful and exciting than traditional Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) jobs, such as customer support and call centers, which dominate local markets.
Are you ready to eliminate executive assistant turnover once and for all, without requiring additional headcount for management? Are you ready to work with someone who loves their support role and views it as a great career opportunity? It’s only an email or phone call away.