Author: Rossie

If you are a busy entrepreneur seizing business opportunities all the time, you can’t do everything by yourself. Imagine you need to schedule appointments with clients, make sales, create business strategies, respond to emails, answer phone calls, post on social media, and so on. This is a huge overload.

Many entrepreneurs find a solution to this issue by hiring personal assistants and outsourcing them several tasks. By optimizing and automating those tasks, they are able to focus on more important things such as planning business growth strategies.

But assistants also need to be managed. If you are wondering how to optimize your assistant’s workflow you can implement a business process management software.

Specifics of a Team of Assistants

Nowadays, you have the option to hire assistants on-site, as well as virtual ones. Did you know that virtual assistants could reduce your operating costs by 78%?

A team of assistants should support business owners on several tasks, such as:

• Responding to emails
• Research
• Helping out with presentations
• Taking phone calls
• Helping with social media, аnd more.

If your business grows big enough to hire a whole team of assistants, you might start facing several problems in terms of roles, responsibilities and lack of visibility. How to make sure your entire team stays on track? A SaaS Business Process Management (BPM) software might be a good fit for your business.

The software will give you full visibility across your whole team because you will be able to track delays, tasks and overall performance. This happens with assigning roles to your assistants, setting up repeatable tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and easily keeping an eye on the whole team.

Let’s examine in more detail how the SaaS BPM will shed light on your team of assistant’s performance to increase productivity and optimize internal processes.

Assigning Roles to Each Team Member

Each assistant from your team should have a clear understanding of what its role in the company is. When you create a new role, you need to add a description. Everyone in the company, not only the assistant, should have no doubts about their role and responsibilities in the organization.

If they don’t have information about what’s expected from them, this could lead to bad performance, miscommunication and frustrations.

As the above example from the SaaS software shows, you can create different roles across your organization. As an example, we’ve created a Social Media Assistant role and we’ve written a brief description.

When you hire an assistant to manage your social media accounts, it will be clear for the new hires that they should be responsible for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms that can be added at a later time.

Set Repeatable Tasks and Automated Activities

Creating repeatable tasks or activities will prevent future errors, delays, or overdue tasks. When you’ve got tasks triggering off of due dates, you’re taking a step away from relying on your memory or sticky notes on your desk. Also, it will save time because you need to create a repeatable task, add a due date, assign it to your assignee, and don’t worry about it anymore.

Let’s see how this works using SaaS BPM.

Once you’ve created a role, you can assign it to the respective person from the team who is hired for this particular job.

In SaaS BPM you can create activities and assign them to the responsible assistant. You are able to set repeatable activities on a daily, weekly and monthly basis with recurring dates.

Check the screenshot to see how to assign the activity to your teammates. The Social Media Assistant has one activity that needs to be completed every day – to post on Facebook.

After creating the activity, you choose task duration. In this case, posting on Facebook should take 45 minutes. Then you may schedule the task to be completed before a certain time – in this example- at 11 am.

You can assign the activity to the Social Media Assistant who should create posts for Facebook every day and post at 11 am. Once its done the assistant can mark the task as completed.

Improved Reporting and Visibility on Tasks Completion

Visibility and transparency are critical factors for managing teams and keeping team members on track for projects and daily tasks. With BPM software, entrepreneurs or managers can monitor if their teams are on track with their to-do lists and complete their assignments on time.

If there are tasks that are delayed by team members, there could be a problem with the workflow if it’s outdated or a new team member needs to be onboarded. The clear overview of task completion will give management valuable insights on how they can optimize their processes internally.

Switch Responsibilities and Roles Between Assistants

When you have a clear distribution of your team of assistant’s responsibilities, you will have a better overview of the workflow and adjust it when needed.

For example, if someone from your team needs to take a couple of sick leave days, you can easily transfer the activities to another teammate.

You have a list of all activities and teammates you can filter per activity, user or role. Then you can assign the activities to one assistant to another one quickly without losing track of the workflows, goals, or causing stress in your team.

Collecting Data and Files Easily

If the process requires sharing content on social media, updating blog posts, creating videos, or sharing files across teams, it would be easier to have them in one place.

If we use the example with the Social Media Assistant, who needs to post every day on Facebook, this will require coordination between the designer and the copywriter. They should also have repeatable tasks for Facebook posts, so they won’t forget about them.

Wrapping up

In this article, we’ve focused on how the SaaS BPM can benefit entrepreneurs or business owners and their team of assistants. As the software focuses on recurring processes, this will help you build transparency, visibility, and a clear overview of the whole company.

Managing a team of assistants can be challenging in terms of coordination and communication between them. You can create daily checklists, repeatable tasks and set goals. This way, you will make sure the deadlines are met and the workflow works smoothly.

Handling a team as a new manager can be quite a handful. You are most likely trying to lead your team without disrupting their productivity, which can be confusing and complicated, especially if you are a newbie.

You’ve most likely undergone a few classes or training before becoming a manager or team leader. This will help you improve your leadership skills so you could lead your team to success. However, not everything will be taught during your training, which is why today, we would like to help you become an even better manager by leading your team without disrupting their workflow.

Communication Is Key

It might seem counterintuitive to try and communicate with your team at all times, but proper communication is key to being productive. You don’t have to talk to your team members several times a day – all you need is one meeting that will cover everything so you are all on the same page.

A lot of new managers can get quite uncomfortable when communicating with their employees, especially since most of them are not sure how to approach the team. Additionally, new managers might feel a little aloof when it comes to giving direct feedback about an employee’s performance. This might make you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, which can then hinder your employees’ productivity.

To keep everything fast and simple, try communicating with your team members on their own terms. Some of them might prefer having to talk through chat, while some would prefer talking to you face-to-face. Ask them what they would prefer and adjust to their needs so they can still be efficient with their tasks and not dwell too much on communicating. If they prefer talking or opening up through chat, then consider using a tool such as SaaS BPM, as this can help you catch up on everything that’s happening in the team. It will help you track their mundane activities and easily transform job descriptions into repeating tasks.

Open To Feedback

Proper communication goes two ways – you need to listen, too. Talk to the team as a whole and try to pinpoint what the problem is, how to resolve it, and some processes that would help with the conflict. Always be ready to lend an ear to your team members and listen to what they have to say. This way, you can resolve issues without having to disrupt the productivity in the workplace.

Try to find a balance between resolving issues and letting your employees continue with their tasks. While resolving issues and conflict is a must, it can sometimes get in the way of productivity. You need to find a way to interfere less and resolve more issues without disrupting productivity in the workplace.

Don’t Stop Learning

As a new manager, you have to make sure that you will not stop learning. You still have a long way to go, and you definitely should be open to learning new things that will help you advance in your journey.

Take advantage of the training and classes that your company is offering. Sign up for manager training and always make sure to put them all into good use. If your company is no offering leadership training, then go ahead and look for one online. There are a couple of classes that you can enroll in.

Consider reviewing the things that worked and the ones that didn’t under the previous management. Take proper training for it so you can see what you can do to improve the system. It’s your job to communicate with the executives and other leaders so you can properly lead your team and increase their productivity.

Focus On Helping Your Team Grow

Happiness, satisfaction with the job and position, and performance levels are all tied together. As a manager, you have to make sure that every member of your team is happy with their roles and responsibilities.

To ensure that productivity is on top of the list, always challenge your team members or employees to be a better version of themselves professionally. Nobody wants a boring or dead-end job, which is why you should ensure that they have the capacity to follow their dreams, grow and improve in your company.

However, you should also make sure that your employees would not feel too tired or burnt out because of all the tasks that they are asked to perform. Keep a good balance when it comes to delegating tasks so everyone will be challenged to be a better employee. Make your team members feel that they are valued and seen by rewarding them after they’ve done a good job.

Be A Good Example

If you want to lead your team to success, then you have to be a good example that they can follow. Your employees will most likely keep a close eye on you and look at your every move, especially if you are a new manager. For example, if you come to work late, then your employees will think that it’s okay to arrive late since you do it yourself. If you want them to be at their best professionally, then make it a point to lead a good example.

Ask Them About Their Plans and Suggestions

As a new manager, you have to be aware of how your team members are doing professionally. Ask them how they feel about the job and if there is anything you can do to make their tasks a little bit easier. It is your job to lead your team to success without disrupting productivity, and knowing how they work around it is key to definitive success.

Catching up with them once a week is okay, and you can do this during meetings or one-on-one chats.

Conclusion

Always remember that every individual is different and that your team members have different personalities, routines, and behavior. Make an effort to know each one of them so you can lead them properly without having to sacrifice productivity in the workplace. Incorporate a BPM tool today such as SaaS BPM to make team managing a lot easier!