By Justine Féron
They’ll buy your eggnog and shop for stocking stuffers, wrap and ship your holiday gifts, string lights on your tree, and even compose witty Christmas-card messages on your behalf.
But this year’s holiday helpers aren’t elves. They’re personal assistants.
As Canadians’ lives grow busier, the personal assistant business is booming. Thirsty Muse, a concierge service company that operates across Canada, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary with its 20,000th assistance request.
In just one year, membership in the International Concierge and Errand Association has grown 110 per cent.
And in Ottawa, a couple who once joked that they needed a personal assistant just to cope with their family and work commitments has built a business out of simplifying others’ lives.
For $33 per daytime hour, Elizabeth DuVall and Rory Harrison of More Time 4U will plan birthday parties, renew license plates and maintain cars.
For $48 per hour, they will deliver chocolate bars to their clients’ doors at 2 a.m. And for $25 per hour, they say they will “deck the halls and shop the malls” for their customers.
“The market for freeing up people’s leisure time is huge,” DuVall says. “A lot of us think, ‘I’d give anything for a lunch hour when I didn’t have to run errands.’ Others need our services to get around. Some people let Christmas creep up on them and panic when they realize how much they have to do.”
In May, Statistics Canada reported that more than 30 per cent of Canadians are self-identified workaholics.
Sixty-five per cent of these workaholics worry they are not spending enough time with their friends and families, and many say they are frequently unable to complete their to-do lists.
DuVall and Harrison say the time pressures created by long workdays and high employer expectations have bolstered the market for concierge services.
“I used to work from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., and I missed that time I would have spent with my daughters,” DuVall says.
“There are lots of different reasons to use a service like ours, whether you have limited mobility or are extremely busy, but the benefit is getting more time to do those things you actually want to be doing.”
One Ottawa resident says personal assistant services have given her freedom from errands and has decreased her need to ask for favours from family members.
“I use More Time 4U so much that I’ve actually gotten Elizabeth a credit card in my name,” says Carol Hendricks. “They’ve painted my house, taken care of my pets, and even gotten my garden going.”
As the popularity of such services grows, some Canadian companies are selling their services to corporations.
Most of personal assistant company Thirsty Muse’s clients are corporations which provide their workers with assistant services as an employee benefit.
Thirsty Muse has even created its own currency, called “delegation units.”
Employees who receive the firm’s services as a benefit are typically given a certain number of delegation units to use each year.
“The bigger the job, the more delegation units needed,” says Jason Herold, Thirsty Muse’s member service co-ordinator.
“It might take a few units to walk your dog and it would take more units to plan your Christmas party.”
Herold predicts that Thirsty Muse will get much busier as Christmas draws near.
“The role overload and time drains people experience get even more pronounced at Christmas,” he says.
“For clients who just can’t get everything done, we’re prepared to completely take care of the planning of Christmas.”
DuVall and Harrison also expect their business to grow dramatically during the holiday season.
“It’s all about what your time is worth to you,” Harrison says. “More and more people are realizing that if putting up Christmas lights isn’t your thing or you’re too busy, there are people who will do it for you.”