In short, the difference between a regular remote worker and a virtual executive assistant lies in the delegated task difficulties, reliability, and hourly rate. Here, we will give you a detailed breakdown of these factors. Let’s discuss:
When Should You Onboard a Virtual Executive Assistant?
Among the most basic FAQs, most of our audience have inquired when they should hire an EVA. The easy answer is when your executive needs high-level administrative aid to focus on systematic business growth. However, the process may be more complicated than this answer.
There is a massive difference between general virtual assistants and executive virtual assistants. These distinctions appear in their roles, task complexity, experience level, etc.
Here is a table differentiating between virtual assistants and executive virtual assistants. With the help of this table, you can make an informed decision when to hire which remote professional:
So, based on your workload and other recruitment criteria, you can easily make an educated decision according to the table.
What Does a Virtual Executive Assistant Do?
As mentioned earlier, executive virtual assistants possess a larger working scope, including personal tasks for the organization’s administrators. However, as their service is much more personalized, you will have to customize their job responsibility to gain better benefits.
In general, your executive remote assistant can handle the following tasks for you:
Administrative Tasks
One of the mandatory functions of virtual assistants is handling administrative tasks. Although VAs are generally expected to handle all the administrative duties of an organization, an executive virtual assistant’s organizational tasks are more specialized to help busy professionals.
Here are the administrative chores you can expect your EVA to handle:
- Calendar Management – Scheduling meetings, appointments, and travel in calendar apps with specific times, dates, and reminders.
- Email Management – Classifying emails, responding to urgent ones, and forwarding relevant ones to relevant personnel.
- Travel Arrangements – Reserving flights, hotels, and transportation, considering costs, convenience, meeting schedules, and other relevant factors.
- Expense Reports – Monitoring and submitting expense reports according to company policies and tax regulations.
- Document Management – Organizing and filing essential documents, contracts, agreements, and presentations.
Event Planning
As seasoned professionals, virtual executive assistants are expected to handle all the event planning tasks. This gives your busy executive employees more scope for strategic planning and handling other essential aspects of the organization.
Here are some general event planning tasks that remote executive assistant services should cover for your organization:
- Pre-Event Planning – These tasks involve budgeting, financial planning, venue booking, vendor coordination, event scheduling, and designing and sending invitations.
- Logistics Management – Here, EVAs make travel arrangements for speakers and guests, accommodate bookings, coordinate transportation, and set up equipment and technology.
- Communication – Liaising with clients, vendors, and attendees, managing RSVPs and guest lists, handling inquiries, and providing event information are the high-value tasks in case of event planning communication.
- On-site Support – Remote EAs are often tasked with coordinating event setup and teardown, managing event staff and volunteers, and troubleshooting issues during the event.
- Post-Event Tasks – Once the event ends, executive VAs collect and analyze feedback, reconcile expenses, finalize budgets, and prepare the post-event report.
Project Management
As online executive assistants are hired to assist managerial-level employees, they will need to handle several projects. Your administrators can delegate the following project management tasks to their remote EAs:
- Planning – Setting project goals and objectives, creating project plans, and defining project scope and deliverables.
- Scheduling – Managing project timelines and deadlines, coordinating team schedules, and organizing virtual meetings and follow-ups.
- Task Management – Assigning tasks, tracking progress, and ensuring completion.
- Documentation – Maintaining, preparing, and documenting reports, presentations, project milestones, and achievements.
- Budgeting – Monitoring, managing, and keeping projects within budget.
- Risk Management – Identifying risks, developing risk mitigation strategies, and monitoring them.
- Quality Control – Maintaining quality, conducting quality checks, reviewing, and improving.
Communication and Customer Service
Communication and customer service are critical parts of any organization that can make or break business policies. Suppose your executive employees need to handle all communication and customer service tasks. In that case, it can take up their whole schedule, and they will not be able to focus on other aspects of the business operations.
So, if you hire a virtual office manager of EVA, they can support you with the following tasks:
- Customer Support – Answering customer inquiries, resolving complaints and issues, and offering information through various channels.
- Client Communication – Scheduling and coordinating meetings with clients and managing client follow-ups and feedback.
- Internal Communication – Facilitating team communication, organizing and distributing internal newsletters, and coordinating internal meetings and updates.
- Social Media Interaction – Responding to messages and comments, engaging with followers, building community, and monitoring social media customer feedback.
- Feedback Management – Collecting and analyzing customer feedback, preparing reports on customer satisfaction, and implementing improvements based on feedback.
Research and Analysis
Another important task your managerial body handles is research and analysis. It helps make informed decisions about different aspects of your organization, including branding, marketing, production, and sales. However, research and analysis tasks can be very hectic and time-consuming.
Therefore, you can easily appoint an executive VA to assist your managerial body. It will make the research process more effective and bring better results. Here are the tasks a remote EA can assist with research and analysis:
- Data Collection – Gathering data from various sources, conducting surveys and interviews, and compiling research materials.
- Data Analysis – Analyzing data sets, identifying trends, performing statistical analysis, and creating data visualizations.
- Market Research – Analyzing market trends and competitor data, identifying opportunities and threats, and generating market analysis reports.
Additional Tasks
A remote personal assistant’s primary function is to make the lives of managerial bodies easier. Therefore, they may need to conduct some additional tasks. Some of these tasks might look like the following:
- Purchasing items online for the office, person, or the team EVA is representing.
- Handling personal errands or appointments on behalf of the managerial body.
- Providing technical support to team members and troubleshooting.
Executive remote professionals excel at what they do. Therefore, you should clearly define their job description and maintain all the legal procedures. Once you define their roles, your organization gains better traction within a minimal budget than hiring a full-time employee.
Why Does Your Organization Should Recruit an EVA?
The goal of hiring an EVA is to bring efficiency and productivity to your business leaders. When you hire a virtual executive assistant, you can gain the following benefits:
- Gain more time to focus on strategic activities.
- Get support according to your business needs, even across different time zones.
- Obtain specialized skills and extensive experience to manage tasks professionally.
- Achieve the ability to scale support up or down based on your organizational requirements.
- Receive assistance in organizing your business processes.
- Bag better security for your information by improving data security.
What Should You Look for in a Virtual Executive Assistant?
Now, if you are committed to hiring a virtual executive assistant, you should know what to look for. As business owners, you need to find the right professional who can bring growth to your organization. Here are the facts you need to check beforehand:
- Ability to manage multiple tasks and prioritize them accordingly.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Be adaptable to adjust to new tasks and changing priorities.
- Ability to anticipate needs and take initiative without constant supervision.
- A strong understanding of office software and project management tools.
- Trustworthiness.
- Ability to manage time to meet deadlines and keep projects on track.
Where You Can Hire an Executive VA to Outsource Tasks?
Bagging the perfect executive virtual assistant services can bring exceptional results for your business development. While these remote professionals will professionally handle administrative duties, you can focus on bringing productivity and making strategic plans.
YesAssistant is the perfect platform for you to hire the perfect executive VA. Our remote executive assistants have been expertly offering their services for more than 10+ years. They can be the game-changer for the business that you are looking for.
So, fill out the form and register for a free consultation. Gain the necessary traction for your business and grow exponentially.
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