Administrative assistant is a designation that depicts the role of an employee in an organization. Their key responsibility areas vary from organization to organization. Generally administrative assistant perform as a support function to a specific team or a specific department in an organization. To perform job analysis of administrative assistant, following process will be adopted:
Step 1- Define Purpose of Job:
The Administrative assistant will act as a supporting function to a specific department and he or she will be accountable to ensure the efficient and effectual operation. For example job of an executive assistant is to perform all supporting activities for top executive in organization.
Step 2- Define Scope:
The Administrative assistance will be reporting to his senior officer and he or she will extend all possible support required for the assigned tasks and official activities. Example executive assistant report to top executives like Chief Executive Officer, Chief Finance Officer or Chief Commercial Officer depending upon the department they have selected. They perform all analysis related tasks, monitoring tasks and evaluate very confidential information.
Step 3- Responsibilities:
Major responsibilities of Administrative assistant includes –
Provide support to seniors and other team members for smooth operations. Support services are as follow; 1. Paper filing and documentation. 2. Report and correspondent’s preparation. 3. Official emails and notices. 4. Record minutes of the meeting. 5. Distribution of minutes. 6. Controlling office requirements in terms of stationary, systems, software’s and any other requires machinery. 7. Stock level monitoring.
Management Information System; 1. Manage confidential information. 2. Manage records of all the decision taken in the past. 4. Provide support in policies preparation and in doing any type of research. 5. Prepare board review presentation and reports. 6. Prepare board member communication. 7. Organizing and coordinating board meetings, intra department and inter department meetings. 8. Prepare outline for meetings. 9. Assist seniors while meetings.
Administrative assistance responsibilities also include job of receptionist. Assistant needs to greet people on behalf of seniors. He or she requires answering any query or phone call.
Other responsibility of Administrative assistant includes – intra department coordination to carry out routine activities, sending fax, ordering food and provides any kind of official support as and when required.
If we take the example of executive assistant, he performs all above mentioned tasks for his senior.
Step 4 – Knowledge and Skills Required:
After defining roles and responsibilities, we will define knowledge and skills one should have to perform the job of administrative assistant.
Knowledge – person should have knowledge of office documentation like filing, record keeping etc. he should have understanding about how top executives systems works. A high degree of accuracy and confidentiality is also required.
Skills – good written and verbal communication skills, very attentive, team builder, stress and time management, analytical power, decision making and interpersonal skills.
The job involves great level of accuracy and confidentiality hence person should be high in ethical values, committed, trustworthy.
Step 5 – Work Conditions:
After defining knowledge and skills the next step is to focus on work conditions. Person is required to perform tasks under tuff situations and at short time lines. The job requires following attributes:
Physical toughness – job will involve long sitting hours on the computers. Which may cause’s body pain, headache and any other health problem.
Environment – Administrative assistant will be sitting in open space and will also be having meeting with various people.
Mental and sensory attentions – to maintain high level of accuracy it is very important to perform tasks with full attention and concentration. Meeting deadline and performing tasks in very short time will give stress to the employee.
All above five steps define how to perform effective job analysis and what all information is needed to perform the task.
References
Administrative Assistant Job Description. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2011, from www.ctoralhealth.org: http://www.ctoralhealth.org/Assistant.pdf
Best-Job-Interview.com guiding you to success. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2011, from www.best-job-interview.com: http://www.best-job-interview.com/executive-assistant-job-description.html
