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.

The chapter six “Assistance Skills” will discuss the role of the administrative assistants in terms of providing the technical assistance in the office by getting acquainted with the tasks of this role.

The seventh chapter “Developing and Managing Office Budget” will discuss the tasks of developing and managing the budget of the relevant office or department wherein the administrative assistant works. And this objective will be achieved by applying the principles and foundations on an example illustrating the case of using the budget in the office work.

The chapter eight “Supporting The Manager’s Public Relations” will also touch upon some of the tasks that the administrative assistant handles in the pursuit of helping their manager in performing the Public Relations duties that are usually carried out in the context of the administrative work. The chapter nine “Managing Interpersonal Relations” is discussing the management of the interpersonal relations; whereas the administrative assistant deals with several people inside and outside the organization, and the main objective of these dealings is to masterfully assume the duties and tasks in a way that would serve the best interest of the organization. It’s worth noting as well that dealing with people is sometimes considered a task in per se, just exactly as in the case when the administrative assistant takes the responsibility for receiving the visitors of the manager or dealing with indignant colleague.