Business owners and leaders – if you used to think that admins’ work is not that valuable, repent. Here’s the cold, hard truth: Without them, your business – and your work-life balance – will be ruined. Want to give it a try? Just tell your admins to go on a vacation for a month, and you’ll realize how badly your business relies on them.
If you’re interested in learning more on how to treat your admins better, read on.
Admins = Unsung heroes
In comic books, superheroes can leap over buildings or fly, have unimaginable strength and special abilities, and are often from other planets. But we all know that superheroes aren’t real—are they? In fact, there may be one sitting in your office, every day, unrecognized and uncelebrated. Who is that? It’s your administrative professional.
Every office has at least one of these important people, and some have many. What they do and what they are called varies from company to company. No matter what the business sells or services, it probably has an administrative professional: There were over 4 million of them in 2014. And their numbers are only going to increase: Labor forecasts say there will be a 10 percent increase in administrative professionals in just 10 years.
Here’s an infographic dedicated to admins, courtesy of Quill.com:
But why?
Why are administrative professionals so valuable to so many industries? Probably because they have such a range of skills. They’re an office’s front line, for starters: They negotiate with visitors and callers, and evaluate daily interactions with other employees. Organization skills are key: Without them everything from old-fashioned filing to new-fangled digital filing wouldn’t get done correctly. The most successful administrative professionals communicate a variety of needs to a variety of audiences, even as they juggle their own to-do lists.
Those to-dos can be as varied as the types of offices that you’ll find administrative professionals in. Some focus on a specific department, such as human resources or accounting. Others must perform a little bit of every task that’s necessary.
Takeaway
Whatever you call them, whatever the office, whatever their skills, take time to recognize the extraordinary contributions that your administrative professionals make to your daily work life. This graphic can help remind you, and everyone, why they matter so much.
