The Case for Maintaining Executive Support (even during restructuring)
One of the roles that have been impacted lately during this latest round of layoffs is that of Executive Support. That could be Executive Assistant, Executive Operations, Executive Business Partner, etc. Companies that have cut too much here could see a massive decrease in productivity in both the Executive Suite and the downstream teams.
How can you be sure that lost productivity and efficiency aren’t going to cost you more than you saved in the reduction?
If you have gone from a full complement of Executive Assistants to having large teams and multiple Executives now sharing one resource, or worse, doing without, how much is that actually costing you throughout the company?
Let’s look at some facts:
According to HBR, on average, an Executive assistant needs to only save their executive 8% of their time to recoup their salary cost. (Based on a $1M OTE for an executive and $80K for the assistant) *HBR LINK HERE
If an Assistant saves you only 2 hours per day, over the course of a year, you would have saved 13 work weeks, or one whole quarter of time per year - multiply that over the entirety of your organization and the investment in your Executive Support team is a no-brainer
Assistants are the eyes and ears of the company. Identifying issues before they get out of hand, working to save time and resources within the company, building social capital for their Executives, and more.
So, we know that an effective Assistant is a value add to your company and will SAVE you time and money. The next question is, what do you do when you’ve reduced your Talent Acquisition team?
Here’s where a specialized recruiter for those new or backfilled roles may be the solution.
This allows you to continue doing what you need to do for your company without committing to an in-house recruiter salary and the additional burden (benefits, taxes, workers’ compensation, etc) that goes along with that. You only need to pay per role to be filled.
Working with a recruiting firm, especially one that specializes in Executive Support placements will ensure that your company keeps running at peak productivity, even during the leaner times.
If you have to pause and have your Executive Support take on an increased load, how do you ensure that they can be effective doing double or triple the work so that they don’t burn out and that your teams still will receive the full benefits of working with an EA?
Skills training and coaching.
Ensuring that you make an investment in the training and coaching of your remaining Executive support team is crucial to keeping your momentum and ensuring you’re ready to scale when things pick up, not losing ground. It is a small cost and will return great value to the organization. Then, when you are ready to grow your team once again, the existing team is up-leveled and can pass those skills and training to the new hires, creating a more skilled bench of talent in your organization.
It takes time to onboard and ramp new hires. Think about when the Great Recession ended, or when the last economic changes happened. Were you ready to capitalize on the opportunities? Or were you playing catch up for 6+ months while you looked to hire and train?
Don’t be caught flat-footed and short-sighted by looking only at the immediate need. Even while cost-cutting be sure you are planning to be ready to accelerate your company when the time comes. You don’t want to be left behind by your competition because they were strategizing and you were focused only on putting out fires.
