When you work for a large or small corporation, the calendar is an important tool to your day to day duties. It doesn't matter if you are an admin, a manager, or a CEO.
The one thing that will aggravate EVERYONE around you is when a calendar, which is the property of the company, is blocked from the rest of the company. We're not talking about seeing the details. Frankly, no one cares!
I'm talking about seeing the basic Free/Busy. Thereby allowing some basic planning for when, as a courtesy, you call the person to confirm the time is actually available.
When the CEO and the Chairman of the company allow their calendars to show Free/Busy, it is poor form on an individual's part to think themselves more important than the people who allow them to have a job.
Free/Busy won't kill you, but not seeing your calendar might make important people wonder what you are hiding.
It's bad enough Admin Gal has to deal with Sales people who give the profession a bad name. She knows there are plenty of good ones in the sea. But it chaps her behind when a company invokes the name of two other companies in order to phish for information.
Admin Gal just had the misfortune of a call from 'Jack', I didn't know that there were many 'Jack's' in India, who said he was from FEDEX who said he had a package for my boss. It's one thing to confirm the address. The tell is when the 'Jack' in question starts confirming rank and position with the company. What does that have to do with the package?
Admin Gal detests liars.
The phishing expedition was very disappointing for 'Jack', but entertaining for us.
When asking for a favor to an Admin who does not support you, you the recipient of said favor should do everything in your power to make things easier for her.
If you do not, said Admin might do one or all of the following:
Conveniently move your task to the least priority pile. The pile that gets done when hell freezes over.
Mail your Visa application directly to the Kremlin, even though it was for Brazil.
Schedule hardware maintenance on computer without providing a replacement.
Cancel your smartphone contract and charge the cancellation fee to your personal credit card.
Revoke your access to all essential drives that contain anything that might be remotely useful in the day to day operations of your job.
As an Admin, we are required to be helpful, not be taken advantage of.
Some days a simple smile can go a long way in the office environment. I'm not talking a flirty or suggestive smile. I'm talking about a genuine happy to see you, I'm glad you are here smile.
The smile is something so simple, yet so powerfully profound. When the office environment is tough, someone is having a really bad day, a smile can make all the difference in the world.
Not to be too dramatic, but a smile can save a life.
When you smile at a person, it means you acknowledge them. You've made an effort to notice them. In an age where we are inundated by deadlines, buried in assignments, and overwhelmed by responsibilities, being acknowledged can truly make a difference in your day or someone else's.
So, Admin Gal's Challenge to the world at large is to smile at someone today.
We all do it. Take a call on speaker phone because we don't have a headset, or need to multi-task. When we live in cubicle land for a full third of our lives, it is not a full experience to hear everyones conversations.
It gets even worse when people put their own families on speaker phone, letting the whole world know their business. Frankly, the world doesn't want to know. I don't want to know about Aunt Martha's hemorrhoid surgery or Daddy's colitis or Sally-Jo's dating travails. Everyone has enough drama in their lives, why do we want yours?
So, here are a few simple rules by which to keep your cubicle mates from finding creative ways of disrupting your calls:
Pick up the handset of the telephone! It won't kill you and you might even have some privacy.
Ask IT for a headset if your neck hurts from bracing the handset between your ear and your shoulder.
Reserve a conference room if the call will be long or have an engaged discussion.
If your cubicle mates won't take the hints or outright requests to pick up the phone, here are a few things that might encourage them to change their ways:
Interrupt and participate in their conversation. After all, if it's on speaker phone it's public consumption.
Have a coughing attack every time they are on the phone. The more disgusting the better. Who wants to be talking to someone who works in a germ factory.
Record the conversation at your desk and play if for their manager. After all, managers really do not want their employees discussing company or personal business in a way that will disrupt everyone else's ability to do there job.
Honestly, if you don't want your personal life or your work life talked about, PICK UP THE PHONE!
As an admin, there are many things I tolerate in the commission of my duties. Cluelessness, Obliviots, etc. Normally I can manage around all of this, but there are a couple of things that tend to send me over the edge. One of those things is meeting management.
The reality is when facility resources are limited keeping meetings on time it ABSOLUTELY essential.
The situation that I find myself in is difficult. I don't like being a bad gal. But I can be a spectacular Bad Gal if the situation calls for it. Sometimes I need to knock on doors and remind people that they are running over and delaying other meetings. I give them a 2 minute high sign. If they can't wrap things up in that time, they will then need to adjourn and table the discussion for another time.
When the meeting run past the allotted 2 minute mark, well then I get mean. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
Here are a few helpful hints when running a meeting:
Be aware of your subject matter - Are you scheduling enough time? Do you have an agenda to keep everyone on task?
Know your people - Are they talkers? Do you need to account extra time to accommodate?
Is the conference room you've scheduled booked immediately after? - Be courteous to the next group. They are on equally tight schedules.
If you can at least follow these few strategies when planning your meetings, you will have successful meetings.
More importantly, you won't have me knocking on your door saying 'Time's up!'
Everyone has a job to do. That is a simple truth. You can be a baker, butcher or a candle-stick maker. In the corporate world, a receptionist, a manager, or an executive. Or anything in between.
What you do is not as important as how you do it. Do you have a passion for your job or are you just watching the clock to pick up he paycheck at the end of the pay period?
If you are the later, you are doing yourself and the people you work for and with a HUGE disservice. My question to you is why do you bother?
I enjoy the challenge of being an Admin. Without my particular skill set my current organization would suffer. My job is to be the glue to hold my organization together. I am a liason between management and the floor. Keeping a pulse on the morale is an important part of what I do. I am defined by my demeanor of professionalism that I maintain during stressful times. By the genuine caring of the good people with whom I work with.
So, back to my original question. What defines you?
The Administrative Assistant has come a long way from the days of “Would you like cream with your coffee, sir?”
While we still might answer phones and take meeting notes, we also manage offices and projects, balance budgets, act as unofficial keepers of morale, and general ombudsman of schedules. Sometimes our job descriptions have us working in a more personal capacity to our employer, for example running small errands for your boss, helping them in small details in their personal lives all so they can have time to get their jobs done.
As Admins, we often have the pleasure of training people new to the experience of having an Administrative Assistant’s skills at their disposal. For the newly appointed manager who has never had access to administrative help. An experienced Admin will work hard at determining their needs and creating a partnership that will be beneficial to both in the long run.
My personal favorite is the new MBA or clueless collegiate graduate who comes into a department with an admin. Lo and behold, they are incapable of sending faxes, getting coffee, composing letters or other tasks they consider menial because ‘that’s what an Admin is for’.
While I am willing to offer assistance to those in need, they are secondary to my primary function. That function is to support the executives that too whom I report directly.
This Admin firmly believes in teaching people how to fish. You see, I have one to two top executives that take the majority of my time. If they ask me to send a fax or compose a letter, it is because they do not have time not because they are lazy.
After one or two instances of people not in my direct chain of command pawning their work off on to me, I will have a conversation with them. If that doesn’t work, woe be unto them. I will then bring out the big guns.
You see my executives do not like to have their resources wasted.
When offices consolidate, space becomes premium. Old habits of squatting wherever you want are hard to break.
Admin Gal has been forced into the role of Space Police. If a conference room has not been booked by the inhabitants, Admin Gal has to play Bad Cop. This is not fun when the person out ranks you. Evicting a Director, Vice President, or President is a dicey situation. But when it is a consultant, Admin Gal has no issue.
Granted their assigned space is limited, but so is the actual working space of the working environment of the company. Courtesy says you do not just plop yourself down and claim squatter rights. Where most of the time possession is 9 tenths of the law, when it comes to resource management, not so much.
Admin Gal is happy to try and find space for people. But don’t act like a toddler if you don’t want to be treated like one.
