Having clear admin assistant goals is important because it serves as your passageway in knowing the right people to hire.
Setting admin assistant goals to your team will help them understand the problems of potential clients and how your firm responds to their needs. You need to ensure they accomplish legal tasks, ensure team members have a smooth workflow, and get back on client inquiries.
Without specific goals, you can’t determine how your law firm stands out from others. In this guide, we discuss why goals for administrative assistants matter, including SMART goals for executive assistants. Determining the right goals must not only shape your firm’s future, but must also benefit hardworking and reliable assistants.
What is an Administrative Assistant?
An administrative assistant strengthens the foundation of a company by accomplishing tasks to help managers, co-workers, and clients. Without them, the company wouldn’t be able to function properly or won’t have a smooth structure of responsibilities. An administrative assistant is someone who’s detail-oriented, practices good time management, and executives interpersonal skills. They assist with administrative tasks and problem-solving matters for the company.
Nowadays, there’s a rising number of administrative assistants working from home or remotely, commonly known as virtual assistants (VAs). There’s a 13% higher productivity for remote workers like VAs compared to on-site staff. Another benefit of hiring administrative assistants is outsourcing to them can decrease 15-25% of training expenses.
Why Setting Goals Matters for Administrative Assistants
Setting goals for administrative assistants is crucial to meet the needs of your company. You’re not only hiring experienced or talented people, you’re also teaching them the right skills to secure clients. You’re the one who will give them an overview on what tasks to prioritize. Instead of consistently telling them what to do, they will take up initiative in planning projects or meetings on their own.
Once you have set admin assistant goals, you’ll now have clarity on how you want your firm to run. If your organization only has a few administrative assistants, it’s crucial that they are all on the same page. This is to avoid miscommunication to be normalized.
Also, goal setting aligns individual performance with company goals. Not all assistants have the same strengths or weaknesses. Teach them what you know and see what they’re good at.
What Are SMART Goals for Administrative Assistants?
When setting goals for administrative assistants, use the 5 SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. These provide a strong foundation on how they practice required skills and improve work performance. Also, it can help them prioritize administrative assistant skills your legal team needs.
It’s difficult to focus on administrative tasks without project management training or progress tracking. Most administrative assistants take project management roles as their primary responsibility and they’re usually the ones who schedule team meetings and submit reports. You don’t want to experience stress if assistants can’t complete tasks within the given deadline. Applying SMART goals will help you provide the right training resource tools that new hires can use to kickstart their legal journey.
Here’s why it’s important to apply SMART goals for an executive assistant:
- Strengthens communication skills – Working with multiple departments will only enhance an administrative assistant’s communication skills and form good relationships. Being an administrative assistant means preventing miscommunications and missed deadlines as it can affect a specific project you want to publish in time.                                          Â
- Makes room for professional growth – Following SMART goals help admin assistants showcase skills like project management and technology and automation. These skills can potentially progress their paths to operations or senior roles.                                                   Â
- Helps practice accountability – Being an admin or virtual assistant means being prepared to practice accountability. Using SMART goals can help your administrative assistants to have better self-management and consistent improvement as their work experience progresses.Â
- Enhances work efficiency – Measurable goals can help admin assistants plot how a normal day in your law firm will look like, including the tasks each team member needs to accomplish. This will result in a more organized work process and faster turnaround times. Â
Lesson stress – An administrative or executive assistant exposes them to high-pressure tasks. By following administrative assistant SMART goals, you’re already helping your staff to avoid burnout despite being in a fast-paced environment.
Core Goals for Administrative Assistants
Other than SMART goals, identifying what core goals for administrative assistants to follow is also crucial. Before new hires start their administrative assistants in your firm, present them with the possible goals and objectives that they need to study and follow. Sticking to core goals helps them with career growth, discipline, and consistency with the work they do. Below are core goals to follow:
Improve Organizational Efficiency
As the backbone of the company, an administrative assistant’s role is to improve organizational efficiency. They’ll gain experience from doing project management, allowing them to assign tasks with deadlines for every team member. Below are possible challenges that they can encounter:
- Misplaced schedules or tasks for every team member
- Missed deadlines
- Difficulty adopting to new technology
With these challenges in mind, you must have the habit of teaching an administrative assistant to study each member’s tasks. Instead of reminding them everyday on what to do, help them take the initiative of working independently. Provide your company’s training library to practice the staff to become good administrative assistants.
Strengthen Communication Skills
An administrative assistant is your right hand when it comes to checking in recent firm updates. So, they need to master the art of communication. With this in mind, you can’t always be the helping hand of your staff since you have other matters to attend to. But you can create an environment where open communication is a priority.
Below are key strategies your administrative assistant can use to strengthen their communication skills:
- Be clear and get to the point – Part of the SMART goals of an executive assistant is being specific on what they communicate. They should learn to avoid using unnecessary details when delivering a main message.                                                                                                                                                                               Â
- Actively listen – This is important to avoid misunderstanding between co-workers. Administrative assistants must naturally ask questions when they need clarification. Actively listening allows them to gain more insights and can respond more appropriately.Â
- Use appropriate communication tools –Â Introduce the right communication tools to use when delivering various messages to clients, partners, or employees. These include chat apps, email, social media sites, or video platforms.
Enhance Time Management
It’s not an easy job being an executive or administrative assistant. But as a law firm owner, you need to have high expectations on how your staff handle their own work times. There will always be instances when urgent tasks are given to them or when a client needs immediate chat responses.
Hire people based on how well they handle pressure despite the workload given to them. Encourage them to assign time blocks for specific tasks to give them clarity. At Attorney Assistant, we aim to provide a safe virtual work environment for assistants to enjoy what they do while making sure tasks are successfully completed. We make sure to do follow-ups only when needed, as our assistants take great initiative and accountability for their day-to-day responsibilities.
Master Office Technologies
Being good in using office technologies or tools is a hard skill that every administrative assistant must execute. As a law firm owner, you need to ask a potential assistant during the interview if they have experience using admin tools. They should be able to understand how CRM systems, project management tools, and communication platforms work for your team.
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You usually teach a new hire how to use an administrative-specific tool before they use it for the work week. But it’s understandable that you don’t have the time to do hands-on teaching. So make sure to provide resources of video walkthroughs to help them understand how these tools function for customer service management and business growth.Â
Below are tools that administrative assistants often use:
- OneNote
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Outlook
- Asana
- Google Workspace      Â
- Zoom
- Smart Receipts
- Monday.com
- CalendlyÂ
- NotionÂ
- Canva
Improve Client and Visitor Experience
An administrative assistant will contribute to improving your law firm’s client experience. How they respond to clients during calls or messages can reflect the whole firm. So, it’s important to leave first impressions that can last on potential clients. You can’t have returning clients if you don’t have a good administrative team.
Treat your team with kindness and consideration. At Attorney Assistant, we practice delivering empathy to both our assistants and clients. When your assistant receives empathy from the work they do, they will eventually implement it towards clients. Administrative assistants must always respond to inquiries within 2-3 business days. Once they already answer client concerns, they can schedule upcoming calls or meetings with you.                               Â
Before an administrative assistant starts working in your law firm, you need to teach them the client journey map. This is an essential step they shouldn’t skip because it allows them to:
- Visualize a client’s experience based from their perspective
- Discover potential pain points
- Provide suggestions for improvement
- Extend more empathy and consideration to victims
Overall, improving client experience is more than just greeting them with kindness. It’s more of ensuring they’re paired with the right attorney, their legal rights are heard and protected, and the assurance that they’ll get the justice they deserve.
Professional Growth Goals for Administrative Assistants
Professional growth goals for administrative assistants not only help them fulfill tasks successfully, but can also improve career growth. In the midst of multiple roles they’re trying to finish, it’s important they find purpose in growing their careers. As an owner, it’s your duty to give them the motivation they need to expand their professional performance.
Below are ways to help administrative assistants secure their professional goals:
- Upskilling through recommending or publishing online courses, planning workshops, or hosting conferences.Â
- Provide free certifications in project management, human resources, or office administration.
- Teach them in improving skills such as leadership, problem solving, flexibility, and adaptability
Performance-Driven Admin Assistant Goals
You usually set performance-driven goals to your admin assistants. This can be key performance indicators that you’re expecting every staff must successfully meet before the year ends. Focus on setting measurable goals when applying SMART goals for an executive assistant. Here are some examples:
- Optimizing daily workflows to decrease task turnaround time
- Increase task completion speed to boost work productivity  Â
- The use of standardized email templates for legal inquiries
- Double check and categorize outdated documents that need updating
- Provide consistent client or team reminders
Optimize Admin Assistant Goals With Attorney Assistant
Setting goals for administrative assistants is crucial to contribute to a growing law firm. It’s mainly about making sure your clients are prioritized and treated with care. Following administrative assistant SMART goals helps you gain clarity that your company’s on the right path. It presents a structured system for different departments, ensuring they’re all on the same page.
As a law firm owner, a good working environment can start with you. It can be seen in how you treat administrative assistants with respect and admiration. Here at Attorney Assistant, we have a great team of experienced virtual assistants who have helped attorneys in lessening their legal work. Client calls, document follow-ups, responding to inquiries, assisting with cases, you name it.
At Attorney Assistant, our staff makes things easier for owners by:
- Providing consistent and real-time updates to ensure clients and teams are on the right page
- Streamlining the onboarding process for a smooth interaction
- Managing, organizing, and updating calendars precisely
- Organizing and managing your calendar with precision.
Whether you’re the owner or a legal practitioner, don’t waste your precious hours doing admin tasks. You can’t save your firm if you’re always the one doing the work. Let people help you with answering and getting back on client calls. Work with an Attorney Assistant today to execute your client-centered goals.
If you’re ready to receive administrative help, contact Attorney Assistant today.
