In August 2007, DeskDemon launched a year long award program that acknowledges and rewards the accomplishments of those who support and keep companies running smooth. The viewer’s voted Holly Gondles of Equity Residential in Tulsa, Oklahoma, September’s winner.

Holly Gondles

Holly co-developed an administrative support group to aid the assistants of all Construction and Facilities Managers throughout the portfolios of a leading Multi-Family REIT Property Company and ensure proper support for managers.

This project first began between two assistants (in their off-time) who were always seeing reports being done one hundred different ways, complaints from travelling managers about the support they received and in general no help for the administrative staff within the team. The program developed solved an issue management had struggled with; how to ensure adequate training and consistent levels of support for the national facilities management team.

As the project developed it began to include cross training of administrative staff for construction and facilities, partnering of admins for "Buddy system" alliances, sharing of best practices and strengths to develop on strong national support team, travelling to regional offices for first week training of new assistants. There were monthly conference calls, engaging activities to keep the team development and interest and Awards and Recognition memos to make sure everyone was noticed. These were all things not offered to the support team prior to the FAN (Facilities Administrative Network). (FAN was an accidental acronym but very appropriate because we all know who really stands up and takes charge when **** hits the FAN - we all do!)

The goal of the Management Fellowship Support Award Program is to acknowledge, recognize, reward and promote a network of knowledge of each individual story.

Anyone can nominate an assistant who has made a difference in their day. The criteria for the nomination includes outstanding achievements in at least one of the following areas - organizational and project management, training and mentoring, office management, communication, technology, problem-solving. Winners will be chosen by those who know the job the best, their peers. Each DeskDemon user will be given 10 tokens/votes to distribute as they wish to the entry/entries they want to vote for. Users may change the distribution of these votes anytime within any given month. At the end of each month, the entry with the highest number of votes will receive £250 and their nominator will receive £100. At the end of the Award programme, a group of industry experts will choose the most extraordinary entry for the chance to win the grand prize of £10,000.

If you would like more information on the award program please visit:
http://www.deskdemon.com/pages/us/awards2007/index

Susan Silva, managing editor, is available for interviews, or as an industry expert for your content.
Ms. Silva can be reached at editorus@deskdemon.com