There are five assistants in my department and we support different business lines as well as their staff, and provide backup support to each other. Our management has had discussions regarding the structure of support and came up with the following action items that the assistants are to address (1) evaluate our current ongoing responsibilities (a) who we support and how we are supporting them (b) at what level (management or staff) (2) Assess our strengths and growth opportunities (a) listing our interests (b) listing our areas of expertise (software applications) and (c) organizational knowledge and protocol (legal, procurement, etc.). The goal is for us to come up with a plan for management to better maximize/utilize our skills and have a more balanced workload for each assistant. The assistants are to give our management feedback on this in writing. Has anyone done this before? If so, what was the approach used and how did you present i.e. format for management? Does anyone have an admin assessment form that can utilized. Any suggestions?
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P.S. I work for two departments, so it's no easy task to put my responsibilities in writing with regards to how my duties are split between departments. This means, two departments, two lists of responsibilities.
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Rene Rivers on
9/4/2008 7:25:43 AM
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I like what Victoria has said. She is really right on! Only this year with our new Executive Vice President, are we needing to put down our responsibilities and then e-mail to our immediate supervisors for our performance evaluations. I work for a large hearing institute, so there are many assistants here. This approach is ideal because it allows me to assess what my current and ongoing responsibilities are, identify where I see there is room for improvement, look at what skills and other responsibilities I've gained over the past four years, and identify any interests I may have (i.e., additional training in other areas of the institute). It's a good idea to get together with the other assistants to share what your responsibilities are, where overlapping occurs, how you can better help each other, areas for improvement, etc. It's a bird's eye view of learning what it is exactly each assistant does and provides key information for management in terms of how maintaining an ease of balance in the workload can be obtained on a day-to-day basis.
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Rene Rivers on
9/4/2008 7:23:59 AM
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I have had to do this in a prior position - the most effective way we found was for us all to be in one room with two or three flip charts and brainstorm
1) what we do - list the various 'tasks'
2) next to the tasks put the skills
This will make it easy to see who does what, who has which strengths, growth potential,
3) rank what you do in order of preference
This will easily identify who likes to do what and you may have someone who is an absolute whiz at presentations and someone who really dislikes doing them - and if you all choose you can divvy up work by preference, or team up to improve a skill that one person needs with another who already has that skill.
Good luck.
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Anonymous on
8/20/2008 8:44:38 AM
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Thanks for the responses. The forum is a valuable resource. Kerrie, thanks for your willingness to share your document. I just sent you an e-mail.
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Anonymous on
8/6/2008 5:41:55 AM
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Shea, the replys you have reecived to date are right on. This is a great opportunity for each of you and your management to see in black and white what level of skill, what specialities and plans for the future each of you have. This is a wonderful idea and most companies are not open to laying this all out on the table. My guess is you will discover the following: 1. Who has the most experience? 2. Who has the most skills? 3. Who wants to grow and where? 4. Who needs more training? 5. Would suggest a personality quiz, to determine who should be supporting whom? Because we all work better with some rather than others. Anyway, have fun with this and be honest with yourselves. Don't put too many restrictions on this exercise, "let the big dog eat" so to speak..the reward could be HUGE! Shelly Keith
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Shelly Keith on
8/5/2008 4:36:40 PM
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Can the lady who requested Shea to e-mail her please e-mail me with the copy of the document your administrative used for this type of information? We are in the process of gathering similar information for a administrative assistant career path/development module.
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Charlene West on
8/5/2008 1:41:41 PM
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This is quite a hefty project, but not one to be taking lightly. Your management is asking you to identify how do you think you will best benefit our organization, even if they are not using those precise words. To begin with if it does not already exist I would suggest that each of you begin by developing a desktop directory of your key responsibilities. Then meet and determine where redundancy exists. The next step is to identify each of your respective strengths and where you want to go with those strengths, e.g., maybe one of you really excels at putting together interactive presentations or state of the art publications that can get your company's name out there. Hopefully this will help place you in the right direction. I've also copied a link from the International Association of Administrative Professionals website at www.iaap-hq.org regarding the research and trends for completing a desktop directory. This should give you a footprint with which to start with versus starting at square one. Here is that link.
http://www.iaap-.org/researchtrends/develop_a_workstation.htm
P.S. By being a member of aeap and posting on this discussion board you have taken the first step in leading this project. Why not show them what you've got. What have you got to lose?
Vicki Hahn CAP
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Victoria Hahn on
8/5/2008 1:14:36 PM
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Please email me klhenderson@express-scripts.com and I'll send you an example of what has been used by our admins.
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Kerrie Henderson on
8/5/2008 1:12:08 PM
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