As part of the International Year of the Secretary/Assistant 2014, participating organisations are developing themes for their members in order to raise awareness of Secretaries and Assistants throughout the world… This month is:

PA Power

If you want people to listen, you have to have a platform to speak from, and that is excellence in what you do.   – William Pollard

A few years back, we were at a gig when a girl came bounding out of nowhere and gave my then boyfriend an ecstatic hug… It transpired she’s the PA to one of his main clients and that he had done everything in his power to be her favourite person – mostly so she’d put him straight through whenever he called.  Sneaky bugger!  But it demonstrates the power that gatekeepers have.

VAs aren’t gatekeepers but we do have a lot of influence over our clients –  on
average each VA works with 5.9 clients spreading their influence to nearly 7,700 small businesses in the UK (Source: The UK VA Survey 2013).   Indeed when we polled SVA members about IT choices, 28% responded that their clients took their advice and 8% said they choose the systems used to run the client’s businesses!

This month I’m asking for your help – what can we do to highlight the influence and power that VAs have?