Four Reasons Why Your Assistants Keep Leaving Your Company

Assistants play an important role in every CEO’s and manager’s life. They know your job almost as well as you do, and they’re on the front lines when it comes to office matters. They can schedule meetings, help you remember important things, and help you in more ways than you can count. You appreciate your assistant and you don’t know what you’d do without them. Despite your admiration, you sure seem to have a problem holding on to them. It seems like nearly every assistant you hire lasts 6 months at most, and you never understand why they leave. People are starting to notice that you have a revolving door of assistants going through your office, and you don’t know how to solve it. If you can’t hold on to your assistant and you don’t know why…we may have some ideas.

You use them for too many personal matters

Sometimes you’re running late and you need your assistant to make a call to your spouse, and sometimes you may even need them to run an errand or two. Having an assistant to a few personal things every now and then isn’t a problem, but penciling in a dry cleaning pick up every Monday is overkill. Remember, there’s a good reason why there’s a difference between a professional assistant and a personal one. They shouldn’t know that much about your private life, and if you make them a part of it they may start looking for other more professional employers.

You ask them to do tasks you should be doing

We know that you hired an assistant so you can have more time to do your work, but they shouldn’t be doing nearly all of your menial tasks. They shouldn’t be handling phone calls from high level clients because you don’t feel like talking to them. Unless they’re trained to handle HR tasks, they shouldn’t be picking out a new employee health plan. There are some things you have to do on your own, and forcing your assistant to step in can make them feel overwhelmed and underappreciated.

You let other people treat them like an intern

You hired your assistant to help you with work matters, so why are they rushing to get coffee for the staff meeting? Too many people make the mistake of letting other employees use their assistant for things they have no business doing. They’re there to assist you, not run errands for other employees.

You made their job harder than it had to be

Your old assistant spent at least one hour every day writing down addresses and shipping information, but a digital mailing system could have gotten the process down to 15 minutes. You expected them to set up e-mail address for everyone in the company, but you neglected to tell them that the previous assistant had already started to do that. Work is supposed to be challenging, but there’s a limit. Think about software and tools your assistant can use next time around to make their job simpler.