A personal assistant can be an incredibly valuable asset. Our days are full of small tasks, one after another, repetitive and organizational jobs that are minor, but when you add them up, they’re very time-consuming.
When you have a personal assistant, all these smaller tasks can be handed over to them, freeing up your valuable time so you can focus on what’s important.
Todays article will explore what a personal assistant could do for you, then dive deeper into the costs involved in hiring a personal assistant, and what you can do to keep these costs down.
Let’s get started!
Firstly, what could a personal assistant do for you?
Let’s take a look at just some of the ways in which a personal assistant could help you…
Managing your calendar
Juggling all those appointments, and avoiding double-booking, your personal assistant will ensure your calendar is well managed and you never miss an important engagement.
Over time your PA will learn your preferences and become even more beneficial. They’ll know that you don’t like face-to-face meetings late in the day, or that you prefer to have free time in the afternoons.
They’ll also be on hand to remind you of any upcoming appointments, and they’ll be able to gather together paperwork or prepare any reports you need.
Dealing with correspondence and taking calls
Sometimes it feels like we spend the majority of our lives on the telephone or reading emails.
With a personal assistant, you can skip all of this, only dealing with the most important of communications.
Your PA will answer your phone, open your mail and read your emails, deleting the spam, replying where they can, and highlighting only those that require your attention.
It’s a huge time saver!
Making travel arrangements
If you travel for business, you’ll know how long the planning can take.
You want a good hotel, it needs to be close to transportation and somewhere to eat, and you’ll need to be able to get to your client’s office in good time.
You want flights, and train tickets, and you need to arrive on a particular day at a certain time.
That can all take quite some organizing and a lot of research which can be very time-consuming. Why not leave it all to your personal assistant?
A good PA will ensure your travel arrangements run like clockwork. They’ll do the research, they’ll read the hotel reviews, and they’ll pore over timetables, so you don’t have to.
Plus a wealth of other tasks…
Of course, the work of a personal assistant goes above and beyond all that we’ve already listed.
They’ll be capable of taking on all your administrative tasks, filing, taking notes, running errands, and even making you a cup of coffee. Having a personal assistant is all about saving time, and freeing up your day.
It sounds amazing, it could transform your business and your life, but how much will it cost?
The true cost of hiring a personal assistant
A great PA is priceless, but of course, you’ll need to pay them!
In the US, the average salary of a personal assistant is in the region of $52,000.
However, a highly experienced PA with many years of working for high-profile clients can command a salary greatly above the national average.
As with any other industry, you’ll pay more for a highly skilled PA than you would for someone new to the profession. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll get a lesser service.
Many skills that are invaluable to a personal assistant can be learned within other jobs, IT skills for instance, form part of someone’s hobbies, like travel planning or social media management, or just be a natural talent, such as excellent communication skills and great attention to detail.
Looking to keep the costs down?
Perhaps you’d love a personal assistant but simply can’t justify it financially at the moment, or you simply don’t feel you have enough work to hire someone on a full-time basis.
Or maybe you’re not entirely sure whether or not a PA would be of use to you and you’d like to test the waters a little first.
You could of course take on the services of a part-time personal assistant, perhaps with the option to upgrade to full-time down the line when you feel it’s necessary, or when your business grows.
But you could also consider hiring a remote personal assistant or virtual assistant. Many of the tasks involved in the role of PA can be just as effectively undertaken remotely, from the PA’s home.
While they can’t answer the door or make you a drink, they can still field your calls, sort through your emails, plan your travel and manage your appointments perfectly well.
This comes with several advantages too. While it would be hard to find a personal assistant who would travel to your office to just work for an hour or two at a time, a virtual PA will work for several clients at once, so they will be able to schedule you in for shorter periods of time to suit your requirements.
This type of work becomes more attractive when there is no travel involved, and several clients can be catered to at once.
This also offers you flexibility. You’ll find remote personal assistants that can be called upon when needed, on a more ad-hoc basis, so you’re only paying for the time when you’re using their services.
When you’re busier, you’ll call on them more frequently, but you’re under no obligation to pay for their time when you have no need for it.
This can be hugely beneficial for smaller businesses that only need a helping hand rather than the services of a full-time in-house personal assistant.
How to choose your new personal assistant
So how do you select the perfect personal assistant to suit your needs?
First of all, you’ll need to decide what type of PA you want. Do you want a personal assistant with many years of experience, or someone new to the profession? Do you need someone full-time, just for a few hours a day, or irregularly on an ad-hoc basis?
Write a list of all the tasks you’d like someone to fulfil for you and all the skills they’ll need to successfully accomplish this. When you’re searching for a personal assistant, look for someone who ticks all these boxes. Are they competent in the specific software you use?
If you work in a specialist industry, do they have experience with this?
In an unregulated industry, anyone can call themselves a personal assistant, with no prior experience or qualifications, so one thing to look out for is an applicant that has achieved personal assistant certification. This helps to prove their credentials and commitment, and you can rest assured that they are well-trained in all aspects of being a personal assistant.
