I have started going through the new Global Skills Matrix research, which will be published in full next year.
One theme is already unmistakable. Responsibilities have increased. Titles have stayed frozen. And the gap is costing you.
Across every sector, assistants describe doing work that sits firmly in the higher levels of the profession. Strategic coordination. Cross-functional leadership. Project ownership. Risk and governance work. Acting as the decision filter for senior leaders. Holding the centre of the organisation together.
Yet the job descriptions attached to these roles still read like it is 1980. Filing. Travel booking. Expenses. General support. The document says one thing. The actual work is something entirely different. And because HR typically benchmarks pay against the written job description and the job title, not the lived reality, you are held in a lower pay band than your responsibilities justify.
This mismatch is not cosmetic. It is structural.
When the title is low, the pay band is low. When the job description is outdated, the salary benchmark is outdated. Even when the work is not.
So many of you wrote that your responsibilities have doubled, even tripled. But your title has stayed exactly the same. Your job description has not been rewritten in years. And because the paperwork has stayed the same, your salary has barely moved. Or you hit a ceiling that makes no sense when you look at what you are actually delivering.
It is not that HR or leadership are malicious. It is that title frameworks and job descriptions were built for a version of the role that no longer exists. They were never updated when the role became digital, analytical, operational and strategic. They were never updated when assistants became administrative business partners.
This is why the Matrix matters. Not as a theoretical tool, but as a way to align title, job description and reality. And once those are aligned, the pay can finally align too.
If your responsibilities sit at a higher level, your title should reflect it. Your job description should document it. And once they do, your pay can follow. The profession deserves a job architecture that matches the work it is already doing.
To everyone who took part in the research, thank you. Your honesty is building the evidence for the change so many of you have been waiting for. And I am already deep into the work.
