If you work as an EA or Office Manager in 2026, you will have noticed how far your responsibilities have expanded. You handle people operations, recruitment coordination and internal communication with the precision of a project lead. Yet many of the tools placed in front of you still belong to a different era. Spreadsheets dominate processes that require accuracy, clarity and speed, and the result is familiar: lost time, rising frustration and a workday that never quite feels under control…
The pressure behind this problem is becoming more visible. CIPDโs latest labour market research shows that employers are facing a highly competitive recruitment landscape: 27 percent experienced day-one ghosting, 41 percent lost new hires within 12 weeks and nearly 70 percent reported fiercer competition for well-qualified candidates. In a climate like this, every administrative delay carries a cost because strong applicants move faster than the tools built to manage them.
This is why structured hiring systems have entered the conversation earlier than in previous years. Modern platforms in the applicant tracking systems UK category, such as theย Factorialย ATS, give you a unified place to oversee CVs, job postings, screening questions and interview scheduling.
The Factorial applicant tracking page explains how the system centralises every stage of recruitment, from generating AI-supported job descriptions to providing real-time funnel metrics, collaborative evaluation notes and a clear visual pipeline that links each vacancy to your organisational chart. Instead of spreading your workload across multiple folders and message chains, you can follow every candidate through one organised dashboard. It acknowledges the reality of the workload you manage each week without turning your role into a series of manual tasks.
Why spreadsheets cannot keep pace with todayโs administrative demands
Spreadsheets once felt efficient. They were clean, familiar and customisable. In 2026 they sit at the centre of most administrative bottlenecks. Recruitment alone includes posting roles, sorting applications, coordinating interview schedules, recording feedback and tracking outcomes. When you manage each step manually, the margin for lost candidates grows quickly.
Deloitteโs analysis of HR workloads found that up to 57 percent of people operations time is consumed by administrative work. Interview scheduling studies show potential time savings of two to ten hours a week when automated tools replace back-and-forth communication. Add the rising likelihood of candidate withdrawals and day-one no-shows, and you can see how easily an EA loses a full day each week to processes that never stop expanding.
This is not simply a productivity problem. It limits your ability to perform the higher-value parts of your job: guiding managers, coordinating decision-makers and presenting information with confidence. When administrative clutter becomes the dominant part of your day, strategic visibility disappears.
The role of the EA has grown into something far more influential
One of the clearest changes in the modern workplace is the broader influence you now carry. You facilitate leadership communication, maintain operational continuity and often act as the connective point between executives and teams.ย Recent profiles of the profession highlight this development, noting that EAs are responsible for crafting experiences, not simply organising them.
External recruitment specialists, including Lily Shippen, describe EAs who prepare board materials, coordinate complex projects and maintain oversight of internal priorities. This evolution has created a role that relies on judgement and planning rather than simple task execution. You are expected to design processes that remain stable even when the organisation is busy, distracted or growing at speed.
When your role is built on clarity and anticipation, outdated tools become obstacles. You cannot offer strategic support when you spend half of your day consolidating spreadsheets that were never designed to hold this level of operational detail.
The hiring funnel exposes the limitations of manual workflows
Hiring is the clearest example of where this problem appears. It is the first workflow to suffer when spreadsheets dominate, because each stage introduces more variables. You may be handling job descriptions, pre-screening questions, shortlists, availability checks, manager preferences and candidate communication in the same afternoon. Each interaction creates another point where mistakes slip through.
More than 60 percent of job seekers abandon applications that feel too long or poorly structured. In-house recruitment teams list candidate experience as their single biggest priority because they cannot afford a process that causes applicants to drift away. Every slow response risks losing someone who might have succeeded in the role.
This is where a modern hiring platform earns its place. An effective applicant tracking system brings all tasks under one digital roof: CV filtering, personalised screenings, interview scheduling, collaborative notes and real-time funnel metrics. You do not need multiple versions of the same spreadsheet, and you do not lose track of a promising applicant because feedback arrived in yet another email thread.
Industry case studies show what happens when this structure replaces manual work. Organisations using ATS frameworks report markedly faster time-to-hire, large increases in qualified applicants and significant savings in job board expenditure. You may achieve different results, but the pattern is clear: once you centralise the hiring funnel, friction drops and decision-making becomes more precise.
How a structured hiring system helps you reclaim 10 hours a week
The idea of reclaiming ten hours sounds ambitious until you look at where the time is actually going. Research shows that HR professionals can spend up to 57 percent of their time on administrative tasks rather than strategic priorities, meaning that routine work such as scheduling, data entry and candidate follow-ups consumes a large share of the week. This figure appears in automation research that references Deloitteโs analysis of HR workload patterns. When you break down each spreadsheet entry, calendar negotiation and message chain, the lost hours add up quickly.
Insights published on LinkedIn about workplace automation report that recruiting teams increasingly rely on automation to reduce repetitive tasks and spend more time on strategy, candidate engagement and decision-making. These findings draw on industry analysis from Gartner and McKinsey, both of which highlight the time saved when coordination and updates move into structured digital workflows. When you combine scheduling automation, real-time updates and organised pipelines, the reclaimed time builds gradually and becomes noticeable within days rather than months.
Those hours are not inconsequential. They give you time to guide managers through more considered decisions. They allow you to prepare better briefings and create moments for strategic clarity instead of constant reactive work. They also support your well-being because your workload becomes structured rather than repeatedly interrupted.
Performance conversations improve when hiring processes are stable
Recruitment rarely exists in isolation. The same organisational habits that complicate hiring often disrupt performance conversations. Notes scatter across shared folders. Appraisals drift between Word documents. Managers arrive at meetings without a clear view of what has happened during the year.
This is whyย resources that promote continuous appraisal frameworksย have gained traction. Frequent check-ins create a cleaner timeline of progress. Managers can review context quickly. Employees feel more grounded. The entire process becomes more meaningful when documentation is easy to locate and consistent in its structure.
There is also a strong link between structured feedback and engagement. Gallup has reported that employees who receive meaningful feedback within a given week are far more likely to be fully engaged in their roles. In practical terms, that means people arrive at meetings with energy, understand what is expected and feel more committed to the organisationโs goals. When you reduce administration around appraisals, you give managers more room to have those conversations properly.
Once hiring is centralised, integrating performance information becomes easier. It reduces recency bias, supports better feedback and removes another source of administrative friction. You can prepare managers more effectively because the information sits in one place rather than across multiple disconnected systems.
Creating a people-operations ecosystem that works with you
The wider challenge is that none of these processes exist in isolation. Step back for a moment and consider the natural connections between your responsibilities: recruiting, onboarding, scheduling, communication, performance notes and leadership support. In an ideal world, these processes would speak to each other. They currently compete for your time instead.
A coherent people-operations system changes that dynamic. You achieve better continuity because information flows logically from role creation to candidate management to performance conversations. You gain visibility over upcoming pressure points. You can advise managers accurately because you are no longer wrestling with folders, tabs and duplicate files.
There is a wider productivity argument here too. Studies of knowledge work have found that employees can spend around 20 percent of their time searching for internal information or trying to locate the right colleague to answer a question. When information is scattered, you see the same issues in your own work: time lost looking for details that already exist somewhere in the organisation. A structured people-operations stack reduces that hidden search tax and gives you faster access to what you need.
Watch how automation can remove obstacles in your daily work
This is not a story about automation replacing your value. It is a story about automation removing obstacles so you can apply your value where it matters: context, judgement and forward planning.
The EA as the cultural conductor of modern workplaces
When hiring becomes smoother, onboarding improves. When performance information is accessible, conversations feel more constructive. When managers receive timely updates, expectations stay aligned. When your tools support you, the organisation feels steadier at every level.
The well-being angle is hard to ignore.ย CIPDโs Good Work researchย has shown that excessive workloads and stress are closely linked to poorer mental health and higher intent to leave. Other reports highlight that a significant share of UK workplaces now cite stress as a major cause of short-term absence. For someone in your position, much of that pressure shows up as additional work, last-minute requests and the expectation that you will keep everything moving regardless of how crowded the systems become.
This is the cultural influence you now hold. You are not simply maintaining structure. You are shaping the conditions in which teams operate. Your ability to coordinate, clarify and prepare has a direct effect on how employees experience the organisation.
Modern EAs and Office Managers succeed when they control the details without being confined by them. Replacing spreadsheets with systems designed for real operational flow is part of that evolution. In a landscape defined by tight deadlines, high expectations and rapid movement, the tools you choose determine how effectively you can lead the work.
Upgrading the process is not just a technical decision; it is a professional progression that gives you the time and visibility to operate at the level your role already demands.
