10 Ways To Leverage Your Offshore Awesome Personal Assistant (APA)

Today’s busy professional is working at a million miles a minute. I know, because it happens to me. That’s why I engage an awesome PA to make sure that everything on my schedule gets done.

I have had the privilege of employing a PA for most of my career and this has enabled me to not only leverage my time through the availability of an additional resource, it has allowed me to achieve a greater balance in both my professional and personal life.

My awesome PA lives in the Philippines.

If you are wondering why your to-do list is almost always never finished, and why there is just not enough time in the day, look into hiring an Awesome Personal Assistant in the Philippines.

Only a few years ago, the idea of an offshore PA was impractical. The problems of time zones and distance were insurmountable. Nowadays, things have changed. With the availability of high speed internet, VoIP and conference communications, as well as highly educated English speaking staff who work in the same time zone, it has never been easier to achieve massive increases in productivity. With a few tweaks in your processes, working with an offshore secretary is just like working in the same building, even on the same floor.

There is almost nothing an onshore PA does that is not capable of being done by an offshore PA.

Your offshore PA is like having another you. From keeping you on schedule to delegation of tasks and a myriad of other opportunities, engaging an offshore PA allows you to keep the trains running while you focus on the big picture. Truly, an investment in yourself!

When you are looking for an offshore personal assistant (sometimes called a virtual PA, although personally I do not like that term), a perceived stumbling block is to find the right person who really fits into the job. Looking for that x-factor in a person physically located in another country can be arduous. By using an experienced and professional offshore outsourcing company like Profitmaster BPO, you can find the Awesome PA you have been looking for.

In the world of offshore business, administrative assistants are spread all over the world, mostly in Asia. In fact the Philippines is the largest provider of offshore personal assistants to Australian businesses. As a strategy, this caters for client connections across multiple time zones although most outsourcing companies in Philippines provide administrative staff working in the same time zone as their clients.

However with all the intricacies in the relationship between a boss and his offshore personal assistant, the requirements of the work and communications between the parties needs to be open and balanced.

So here are 10 ideas to help you leverage your Awesome PA to get back more time and massively increase your productivity:

1. Give your offshore personal assistant the complete A-Z lists of the project. Communicate appropriately, ensuring both of you fully understand not only the project lists but the project itself. If you give the right A to Z lists, you will get the precise 1-2-3’s for the completed project.
2. Freedom with wisdom. Of course, your personal assistant does not want to be baby-sat like a toddler while fulfilling their work obligations. Let them do their job with the assurance that their knowledge and skill is enough to get the job done. Spoon feeding is the last thing you want. It’s the same with your assistant.
3. Get organised. None of us wants to be called “office airhead“ but losing just one piece of information is a total wreck! Let your offshore assistant organise the to do list along with priorities based on your requirements. Help them understand brilliant ideas like “Do It”, “Diarise It” and “Delete It”.
4. Delegate your inbox to your assistant. As the boss, how much time do you spend in reviewing your emails? Reading, deleting, responding, flagging and repeat requires much of your time. Hooray! an assistant can reduce your burden of email management. Just knowing when and how to delegate email management will make a huge impact on how you and your assistant deal with your day-to-day communication.
5. They assist, you invest. Just because you have an offshore personal assistant, you still only want them for the help you need. Like in any other relationship, this is two way. You have to invest in education and training of your skilled PA. In my own case, my PA comes to Australia twice per year. Not only for training, but to meet clients, other staff, suppliers and the like. Doing this cements the relationship between my PA and I. My clients and staff get to meet my assistant. This is a most dynamic way to leverage myself to the other people I do business with.
6. Responsibility develops capability. Your assistant is your eyes and ears in the company, even offshore. Your assistant is involved in the day to day business of the company, acting on your behalf. Their roles can be demanding. Delegating responsibility is a training ground for them. As they get used to it, it will be like a walk in the park.
7. Meet. I meet regularly with my offshore personal assistant every day. We hold meetings by Skype or phone. As much as possible we meet by video link. This creates a much more personal interaction. Meetings are important for they provide real communication time. It helps you and your assistant become familiar. Work conversations become smooth and easy going.
8. Teach work attitude in your absence. Congratulations, you have finally hired your offshore Awesome PA. This journey is all about work disposition and attitude, even over long distances. When you have a great work attitude happening, you can begin to enjoy a glass of wine with family and colleagues without worrying about the office.
9. Show appreciation and feedback. Anyone can do their job knowing the end result is a salary. However, the passion and hard work stems out when being appreciated. Filipino Awesome Personal Assistants love to be appreciated. They don’t just crave for the pay cheque, like all your staff they need recognition and encouragement!
10. Last but not the least, Incentives work!. Come on, be realistic! Your offshore Personal Assistant not only needs verbal appreciation, they need something more than that. Just like an onshore assistant, maybe more so. It is another way of saying “thank you, you did a great job”.
    

No matter what your company does, improving the productivity of you and your work force ends at the bottom line. People are the most important single factor contributing to the success for your company. Engaging an offshore PA has been a great experience for me, one that has given me more time for work and other things as well as increased my productivity where I can get more things done.