What is the difference between a Personal Assistant (PA) and an Executive Assistant (EA) ? - Forum

Hi Allyson,

Personal Assistants help the management team to accomplish their everyday tasks, such as schedule meetings, make phone calls, manage the expenses etc.

Contrary, the Executive Assistants serve the needs of one board-level member.

EAs undertake tasks which are based on the size of the company that they are working for. More specifically, in a small companies, EAs undertake both the responsibilities of a PA and EA. In a medium-sized company, EAs should be qualified in order to perform different and various tasks of their executives. Each and every company should decide if there will be both a PA and EA or the same person will undertake both roles. Lastly, in the large companies it is really important to have both PA and EA, where the former will be responsible for the general daily-routine office tasks while the latter will serve and coordinate the executives with a high confidentiality.

Good luck,
Thomas

Hello Allyson and thanks for your question,

As Thomas commented correctly, Personal Assistants (PAs) are responsible for the daily management tasks of managerial teams such as senior managers and department head. Personal assistants can sometimes be specialised in a particular field, such as medicine or law. In other words, some typical tasks of a PA are the following:

-Scheduling meetings and preparing presentations
-Arranging and managing appointments and events
-Hosting and directing visitors
-Answering and making phone calls
-Organizing the daily agenda of the manager
-Creating and maintaining documents and files
-Reading and responding to emails
-Arranging travels (accommodation, tickets, rental car, etc)
-Managing expenses
-HR

Executive Assistants (EAs) are responsible for more complicated and important duties than PAs. They assist mainly one board-level member, such as CEO, CFO, etc. After a long period of time that EAs work together with the executives and serve their needs, they develop a relation which is based on trust. Nowadays, most of the EAs hold more than one degree and have many years of experience in this position. Some general tasks that an EA undertakes are the following:

-Providing professional advice and recommendations to the executives that they work for
-Accompanying the executives on business trips so as to help them organize their agenda, arrange meetings, etc.
-Handling confidential information and make decisions on behalf of their executives when is needed

Here you can find a list with some courses that we offer regarding PAs and EAs

Best of luck,
The Findcourses.co.uk Team