Message #70193

[Cathy S]

Mmmm I have been thinking about this since it was first posted - and it is something I have been thinking about for a blog following some interesting discussions with my academic colleagues the past few days - one of the main challenges facing our profession seems to be the aspirations of secretarial and administrative staff and how organisations respond to these.

I'll work up the blog with the detail; to summarise, it seems that those we support generally think that the majority of support staff don't have career aspirations and at the same time they expect us to demonstrate an unwieldy combination of proactive and reactive - we are expected to anticipate their every need, yet when they or someone else drops the baton we are expected to pick it up and run quickly.

PAs, Admins have the same range of career aspirations as any other profession; unfortunately whilstever organisations see us as an overhead, a cost on the balance sheet because we do not generate income (directly), equality of opportunity will be limited to all but the most determined.

This is not an easy or quick situation to improve.  Ultimately the only answer is for those of us who seriously want to achieve our aspirations to stand up and be counted.  I'll include some ideas about ways to do that in the blog too ... oh I'd better go and get writing - promise what you can deliver and deliver on what you promise!