Having a virtual assistant is similar to having a company employee assigned overseas. Despite not having the same contract or benefits, your virtual assistant takes on delegated business tasks the same way your offshore or in-house employees work on their responsibilities.
Though they may not be in the same office, it is considered best practice to set key performance indicators (KPI) for your virtual and executive assistant.
Your online administrative assistant should not be exempted from this. Their performance needs to be evaluated with the same standards you use for your company.
Key Reasons To Implement KPIs
You Need To Ensure Reliability
Reliability is essential in your administrative assistant. The lack of physical presence should be compensated with the ability of your virtual assistant (VA) to deliver the output. Reliability involves the responsiveness of your administrative assistants. This should be part of their KPI too.
You have to give them both the project’s turnaround time and communication response time. If they can meet this, it should reflect a high score in the established KPIs.
You Need To Assess Long-Term Working Potential
Getting a virtual assistant is still an investment, and you need to know if this is profitable for you over the long term. Having KPIs to guide you in evaluating your VA’s potential will help you decide.
As a business owner or executive, you need to set specific yet achievable targets for your virtual administrative professionals. It need not be as extensive as that of your in-house personnel, but it should have quantifiable areas directly related to your VA’s performance in doing their administrative tasks.
You Need To Measure Efficiency
Since you cannot see exactly what your virtual assistant is doing, you need to measure it in some other way. Using KPIs can serve as your checklist if your virtual assistant meets your expectations.
You can break down your VA’s competency into three areas—work knowledge, experience, and, yes, even attitude. The way they relate to you and the rest of the team is essential to their overall efficiency because it involves multiple interactions and collaborations.
You Need To Avoid Misunderstandings
When you set key performance indicators for your administrative and executive assistants, both the employee and employer must be clear about expectations.
Administrative assistants play a crucial role in your business, so they must perform to a high standard. Setting the correct KPI metrics will help you avoid any unwanted misunderstandings.
Setting suitable KPIs will allow you to fairly evaluate the job performance of your VA in a discreet manner that is fair to both parties. Make sure that the measurable KPIs are realistic when setting them.
9 KPIs You Should Implement For Virtual And Executive Assistants
1 – Communication
Communication is vital in any business, large or small. Therefore, your executive assistants (EAs) must have excellent communication skills because they will be responsible for dealing with critical information passed on by executives.
An executive assistant will also have to deal with other administrative team members, so a good understanding of how the admin department runs is part of having good office communication.
Executive assistants must have excellent levels of communication when scheduling appointments. The way they communicate may be through face-to-face, phone calls, or emails. Try to assess how responsive they are to specific daily tasks and always clarify assignments.
2 – Coordination
Administrative professionals should always be able to deal with appointment coordination. This may mean that they have to deal with various departments when arranging a training meeting.
Each member of the admin department may need to attend the meeting, so it is the executive assistant’s job to coordinate in the right way to be on schedule.
An assistant’s performance in this area could be evaluated by asking for post-meeting feedback on post-training assessments. The post-meeting stages feedback helps with the overall office dynamics. It also allows you to identify KPIs you need to implement in the future.
3 – Organisation
All executive assistants need exceptional organisational skills to perform at a high level. In addition, they must be able to accommodate peak demand periods with the appropriate personnel.
Each team member’s processes must be taken into account with strategic planning to keep office dynamics running smoothly.
Outstanding organisational skills by executive assistants also require a lot of emotional intelligence. They have to stay calm under pressure to reach the operational achievements set out by the company.
Making sure they have relevant information at the correct times is vital. Meeting preparation is critical if flawless execution is delivered a positive outcome.
4 – Financial Documentation
Working closely with executives means that the assistant will be responsible for managing the executive’s email inbox. Emails may contain sensitive information that must not be passed on to other staff members.
The assistant will also have to look after the travel expenses, payment receipts for office supplies, and other management tasks. Dealing with any financial resources within the sales department requires excellent budget management skills.
Fiscally sound budgets will help the management team track monthly revenue increases. This always helps with long-term performance.
5 – Time Management
It should be evident that time management plays a vital role in any company’s strategic goals. The executive assistant’s job is to keep on top of tasks that have been assigned to other members of the team.
Improving performance by measuring the progress of the day’s priorities and what lies ahead for the rest of the working week will take impeccable time management.
Increasing the executive’s productivity with the proper time management and leadership support will enhance the assistant’s professional development.
6 – Efficiency
When carrying out your job, efficiency may apply to different areas of an assistant role. For example, being efficient at their job may mean their ability to research and filter information correctly.
It may also mean they need to provide focus when it comes to dealing with staff. For example, an efficient assistant anticipates low staffing levels at specific periods due to sickness and holidays.
In this instance, concise correspondence with executives may be needed.
KPIs geared explicitly around the efficiency of all staff are always an excellent way to manage overall team performance.
7 – Scheduling
Correct scheduling is so important to any business. The EAs’ job is to make sure that the executive feels they have been allocated enough time to attend meetings, deliver staff appraisals, and perform their day-to-day duties.
Scheduling calendar dates to conduct a competency assessment to ensure that staff meet the standards set out by coaching assistants is essential. In addition, doing this develops accurate feedback on your team’s performance.
8 – Collaboration
Working in collaboration with all departments such as human resources, the IT department, and the finance department will help your business run smoothly.
Your EA will have to collaborate with other professionals from outside your business. They also must apply emotional intelligence when dealing with clients, especially when delivering complex messages.
There may be times when you need to collaborate with an outside agency to help teach team members processes and skills. Working with other companies should always be viewed as moving your company forward.
Let Us Manage Your VA Teams
Many companies fear hiring a VA team. They fear the process because it takes time and considerable effort to hire the right team that suits your business needs.
Not having enough time to go through the correct hiring process can lead to businesses making errors of judgement when hiring. This costs time and money.
Let us take care of all the hiring, training, and management of your VA teams for you. We have a highly-skilled pool of talented people from the Philippines who are willing and able to help your business thrive.
Call us today for more information and a free consultation on how we can help your business run more efficiently.