Today is the first day for Administrative Professionals week with the primary observance day being Administrative Professionals Day on Wednesday, April 27th. Hopefully you have had your ‘people’ put it on your calendar for you so that as a supervisor, boss, director, manager, lead, member of management, part of the upper echelon can bask in the glory you want to pour over their heads and in the gifts you will emerge from the inner office, corner power suite, board room, executive dining room to bestow.
One of the more difficult tasks of businesses, organizations and government agencies is to define titles and roles. One source, The Effective Admin™ made it simple by defining who isn’t on the list. EA divided it basically into three parts.
Group one is comprised of those you can just ignore. Don’t honor these, gift them or bother with shedding glory upon them. It will be a waste of resources and time. These include the outsiders like consultants, trainers and speakers who are independent. Recently unemployed AAs might think of themselves as worthy but don’t lend credence to the suit they are ready to file, students who are simply want-a-bes and you shouldn’t get their hopes up, retirees who have had their 15 minutes of office fame and have become the contemporary examples of how things used to be done around here. This group is important this year because of the austerity measures recently implemented to pull out of the recession. To overdo will trigger expectations that flamboyant excess is back and salary increases are ahead for those the company truly wants to honor.
Group two consists of anyone who can truthfully say to herself, the company or organization has given me a person at my disposal to direct, manage and motivate. I have been rescued from the category of dubious honors and pointed separation. I am a bestower of favors. With a little creative thinking, you know who you are. Should you get left out of the gift giving, honor bestowing, effusive appreciation this year just figure that someone has considered you worthy of this category.
Group three is a list of the worthy and here is where it gets complicated. When you go to www.admin-ezine.com and look for administrative job titles you will be struck by the varieties of titles listed from a survey they conducted in 2007 before the recession. 250 different titles are listed for the organizational support titles category. Though by far the greatest number are titled administrative assistants at 120 of those responding there seems to be a hierarchy of titles with some being called executive assistants and others senior administrative assistants. Some are still called administrative secretaries.
Some of the more colorful titles on the list are Admin Assistant level IV (no word on weather this person is at the top of the bottom of the pecking order), Secretary to the administrative assistant, Administrative secretary blue ribbon support, Assistant to the Chair (talk about low even the furniture is higher), Bingo Admin Assistant (lots of applicants for this one but doubt the pay is much), Digital Closeout Admin Assistant (they even have someone assigned to turn off the computers), ET support IV (the extra terrestrials have a backup), Freelance Executive Assistant (seems to be pretty independent), Relationship manager (apparently you don’t have to do it on your own), Sr Project associate for administration and member services (now this is the guy who buys all of the gifts).
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