Did you know that the administrative profession is 98% women. It is the biggest employer of women in the world – approximately half a billion of them.
And most find themselves excluded from the things other office workers take for granted.
– For the majority it is still seen as a job, not a career
– Most administrative professionals are not part of a department or administrative function that understands their role. Instead, they work across the business and belong to other departments like Sales, or HR, or Finance, so there is no leadership or plan for how to utilise them as a function.
– Many get no training or pay for training from their own pockets.
– It’s rare to get consistent job descriptions
– Most have no performance review and those that do find it’s based on opinion rather than fact because there is no career framework.
– There is a career ceiling. If they want to be promoted, most have to move outside of the administrative profession or wait for their executive to get promoted and move with them.
– They sit outside the core business.
– There are no assistant-specific goals or KPIs.
– They are treated like a resource and not talent.
And the result is a profession that is misunderstood, underutilised and undervalued. Just think about all that untapped potential. And what tapping into that potential could do for your bottom line.
Because when you implement a career path for your administrative professionals and everyone understands what excellence at each level looks like, you can measure performance. And what can be measured can be improved.
And every extra hour that your administrative professionals save your executives, because they have been structured and trained properly is an hour of the executive’s salary that drops to the bottom line.
Simple economics says that if the assistant and the executive can both so something, the assistant should be doing it, freeing up the executive to focus on the things that only they can do. The things that they are paid their far higher salaries for.
Coming out of the pandemic, the world of work is focused on ensuring they get value from every member of staff. Everything just changed, so what’s one more change?
Implementing a career framework for your administrative function, putting in place an administrative function led by someone who understands admin and can get the best from them, and ensuring all your administrative staff have training brings quantifiable ROI to the bottom line.
In fact, in our experience, the cost savings and efficiencies that result, pay for the restructure and training within the first month.
We have been talking about this for 12 years. Now is the time!
– whilst you are reworking how your organisation runs
– whilst you’re looking at measuring the value of each employee
– whilst you’re driving cost and efficiency savings.
Let’s just do it!
Half a billion women will thank you!
