How to use Administration Support

A key for any business owners is to delegate and make the most of their time, hence it is important to master having effective help with your administrative tasks.

One of the important steps toward getting more things done in a day for a business owner is to delegate administrative tasks. This frees you up to spend time on activities of greater value during your working hours.

You can improve the way you use your administrative resources by initially looking your daily activity and identifying what you are commonly and repetitively doing. Then question each process as to whether it can be given to others to perform.

With the tasks that you determine cannot be handed over, ask yourself if they can be modified or adapted so someone else could do them, for example, you could create an administrative login with restricted permissions to manage these tasks without compromising security or confidentiality.

It’s crucial to invest the time in others to train them adequately and best practice to always explain why this will help if they are supporting you in this way. And though it may seem initially time consuming or you think that you can do a better job, stick it out, as you will reap what you invest later down the track.

A benefit of involving someone else is that you get good feedback from fresh eyes doing a new task, hear about different ideas than your own and sometimes you may find it can be done in a new and better way.

Change the focus of your thinking from “I’m the only one who can do this” to “I am the best trainer of these tasks.”

Set checkpoints along the way which staff should reach and explain at which point they are required to touch base with you that everything is on track. Explain why this is an essential step of quality control. It’s important to periodically review processes with staff to keep them engaged. Make sure the entire process is written into a procedure manual, so anyone can take this on if the owner of the role changes.

Assist your staff to enjoy this aspect of their work. Get them involved, understanding the why, and help them to work within their own terms and efficiency levels. Be mindful you do not just make this about passing on the work you dislike doing. Not only should you enjoy delegating work, your staff should also enjoy the work too.

Here are some ways you can get extra support that covers different budgets –

Employing interns
Having a virtual personal assistant
Hiring permanent or casual staff
Outsourcing specific tasks eg. Marketing, bookkeeping
Using software and IT

Keep a journal of what you are doing right. Most importantly “learn to let go,” trust others, and focus on building the team so that your business will grow.