As a longtime recruiter for executive assistants, I’ve worked with many organizations suffering from the same problem: There’s too much administrative work and too few assistants to whom it can be assigned. Although companies have embraced this logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, back at headquarters they ignore it, forcing top talent to misuse their time.
Generally speaking, work should be delegated to the lowest-cost employee who can do it well. But as a management practice, the structure rarely makes economic sense. Some companies may be drawn to the notion of egalitarianism they believe this assistant-less structure represents-when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, the theory goes, a “we’re all in this together” spirit is created. In their zeal to cut administrative expenses, many companies have gone too far, leaving countless highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. As Robert Pozen writes in this issue: A top-notch assistant “is crucial to being productive.” And they filter the distractions that can turn a manager into a reactive type who spends all day answering e-mail instead of a leader who proactively sets the organization’s agenda. They optimize travel schedules and enable remote decision making, keeping projects on track. They ensure that meetings begin on time with prep material delivered in advance. In reality, good assistants save their bosses much more than that. For the organization to break even, the assistant must make the executive 8% more productive than he or she would be working solo-for instance, the assistant needs to save the executive roughly five hours in a 60-hour workweek. Consider a senior executive whose total compensation package is $1 million annually, who works with an assistant who earns $80,000. That’s unfortunate, because effective assistants can make enormous contributions to productivity at all levels of the organization.Īt very senior levels, the return on investment from a skilled assistant can be substantial. As a result, the numbers of assistants at lower corporate levels have dwindled in most corporations. At the same time, companies have faced enormous pressure to cut costs, reduce head count, and flatten organizational structures. Technologies like e-mail, voice mail, mobile devices, and online calendars have allowed managers at all levels to operate with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. The secretary of those days has gone the way of the carbon copy and been replaced by the executive assistant, now typically reserved for senior management.
#Single copy assistant series#
Man on the Phone, 2006, painted polyester resin, 27.25′ x 11′ x 7′, permanent installation, Cité Internationale, LyonĪmong the most striking details of the corporate era depicted in the AMC series Mad Men, along with constant smoking and mid-day drinking, is the army of secretaries who populate Sterling Cooper, the 1960s ad agency featured in the show. In this article, Duncan, a longtime recruiter of C-suite executive assistants, argues that a good assistant is a crucial productivity booster for a busy executive-one that offers a solid ROI if he or she is deployed correctly. Yet while companies seem to have embraced that logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, they ignore it back at headquarters.
Some companies may see a type of egalitarianism in this assistant-less structure-believing that when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, it creates a “we’re all in this together” spirit.īut as a management practice, that approach rarely makes economic sense. In their zeal for cutting administrative expenses, numerous organizations now count on highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. As technology has transformed the workplace and organizations have downsized, companies have sharply reduced the ranks of administrative assistants.
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