Introduction

Secretariat management jobs have always been one of the highly demanded in the labor market, particularly in the countries which economies go through a cyclical downturn within the economic cycles associated with heightened unemployment rate. Secretariat jobs will still be among the jobs that are rarely affected by the economic downturns in terms of the demand by the employers.

Although the office work automation has greatly affected the field of Secretariat, such effect was rather qualitative than quantitative. Replacing the manual work in the offices with automated systems has lead to the emergence of a new role of the Secretariat that requires a set of capabilities - different from those traditional ones that had always been there in the office work environments - that focus on the competencies of planning, organizing and effective interpersonal relations. Such capabilities make the promising administrative assistants a material of executive managers.

“Office Management & Administration Assistants” is a training program that aims at developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) required for practicing the administrative assistants irrespective of their titles and degrees within the new business environments and the automated office work. The training material is mainly about reinforcing the trainees’ recognition of the mission of the administrative assistants in the business organizations, besides their role in enhancing the effectiveness of the managers, teams, and the organization as a whole. In addition, this material helps the trainees learn the key job tasks that somehow or another are assigned to all the administrative assistants. The training material delves rigorously into such tasks to cover all the knowledge and skills required in a number of the job degrees within the administrative assistance career. The training materials describe as well the tasks of the administrative assistance from the perspective that aims to achieve the purpose of developing core competencies required in the administrative assistant working with one manager or that working in a department.

In the first unit “Regular and Circumstantial Emergency tasks”, key topics would be discussed. In the first chapter “Defining the Administrative Assistance Jobs”, the administrative assistance jobs will be defined, and an emphasis would be placed on the role played by the administrative assistants though inexorably explaining the organizational reasons and factors that have created such importance. Thereafter, it would also go through the key tasks the administrative assistants assume. And better yet, the characteristics of the successful administrative assistants in the automated office workplace. The chapter would later review as well the job development opportunities that maybe available for the administrative assistants and their influencing factors with a view of the fact that the administrative assistance career is the route that leads to a promotion to the managerial posts in the business organizations.

The chapter two “Tasks Planning”, however, is discussing the regular and circumstantial emergency tasks that are usually handled by the administrative assistants; starting from the most important one - tasks planning and scheduling, which represents the effectiveness of the administrative assistants.

The chapter three “Coordinating Business Trips”, however, highlights the system that the organizations implement with connection to the formal trips, procedures of flight and hotel booking, and the arrangements that should be taken before starting any business trips, plus the tasks that the administrative assistants should be doing during the absence of the manager while in a business trip.

The chapter four “Coordinating Meetings” will describe the different types of formal and informal meetings, and direct or medium-based meetings. The chapter will also highlight the tasks that the administrative assistants should handle before, during and after the meeting.

The chapter five “Research Tasks and Reporting” aims to earn the trainee fundamental information in the area of information hunting and reporting without too much details, whereas the knowledge of these tasks is not among the major training objectives of this training material. Therefore, the material will explore the procedures of searching for information and evaluating them, plus the steps of developing and writing reports.