Bob Hallewell talks email for PA Life Training Day

When it comes to email management, Bob Hallewell – Founder and MD of Expert Messaging – is the definition of an expert. He’ll be tapping into his nearly two decades of experience to help attendees of the next PA Life Training Day, taking place on 14 November at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel, take back control of their inbox and increase their productivity. We interviewed Bob to get an insight into his upcoming session.

What led you to train PAs & EAs?
PAs are key people in organisations and in a pivotal position to “spread the word”. We are in the business of building a revolution in how organisations use email – so it makes a lot of sense to tap into the PA network.

Tell us about yourself and your background.
My background is in psychology, training, communication and IT. I have specialised in improving organisations’ use of email for more than17 years now and it’s a great way to help people create space and improvement in their lives.

Can you give us a glimpse of what you’ll cover in your talk?
How come every organisation is having the same problems with email – problems that result in about 26% wasted time across the board? What are the two things that we can all start doing to make the problems go away?

In your opinion, what are the current three challenges PAs/EAs face?
To get others to understand how pivotal their role is within the organisation – and how to help others help themselves.

Where do you see the PA job going in the short term? Longer term?
In the immediate to medium term PAs and organisations need to get to grips with the emergent collaborative technologies like Yammer, Huddle, wikis etc in order to feed into and manage the information flow both for themselves and for the people they assist.

The long term has artificial intelligence looming on the horizon. PAs’ jobs are tied to those they assist – so as long as those other jobs remain too complex to be performed by AI, PAs’ relationship/communication/problem-solving skills will be essential.

Why is an event such as PA Life Training Day so important?
It allows PAs to network and keep their skills sharp, broad and transferrable.

What advice would you give to PAs/EAs?
Dance like nobody is watching; email like somebody is.

What awards have you won during your career?
I’ve received the National Training Award – and very pleased to have designed a proven process that takes an hour to give people a month back.

Anything else?
Come and enjoy the session!