Why it's good to be a bit Monica!

In my last blog I wrote about the benefits of working with a Virtual Assistant, so for this post I thought I would look at the importance of good admin within every type of business and the benefit to your productivity in being organised.

Ok, so it is a bit of a standing  joke with my family & friends that I am a real life Monica from Friends and yes I might take a bit too far, with my ribbon drawer but I think we could all learn a little something from being a bit Monica!

We have all the seen job adverts for ‘administration assistant’ or ‘administrator’ with a job specification of ‘general administrative duties’ but what does that mean? For me ‘admin’ is one of the most over looked parts of any business and not placing a high enough importance could be the difference between success and failure – yes,  I think it is that important! I have heard of many ‘administrators’ being made redundant in the last few years as a cost cutting exercise because managers feel that they can take on the workload, but they soon realise it’s not as easy as it looks!

Admin covers such a huge array of tasks within any business and each one will have different needs and requirements. In my last employed role I was the Admin & Quality Supervisor for a large firm at Gatwick Airport, I supported 4 managers between 2 warehouses and only had 1 part time assistant to help. My role was huge and covered anything from recruitment to ISO document control and everything in between to make sure the operation ran smoothly. In my hand over when I left it was over 20 pages long with all the information about what the role entailed!

Good administration takes time to get to right as you need to find what works for you, but organisation will be always play a key part and for me they go hand in hand.

We are all moving towards a paperless way of living, with lots of us now using on line banking and services, which is great as it makes it easier to stay organised and it takes away the paper element which causes so many issues for people. However, just because you are not filing a hard copy, good filing systems on your PC will help everything stay in order.

If you can immediately put your hands on that quote, that email from a client or that report not only will it save you time searching for it, it makes you look so much more professional and efficient to your clients and that is invaluable!

If you know you can’t be that organised or you can but it will be at the detriment to other parts of your business then it is certainly worth investing in admin support whether it be via a VA or by employing someone – it could be the making of your business!