The Guardian

London

If you thought that businesses were run by bosses, think again. High-powered PAs with degrees and extensive IT knowledge are the driving force behind many of today’s organisations, according to new research. City & Guilds in the UK, which carried out the survey of 1,400 PAs, discovered that the demands of today’s workplace are resulting in a new breed of “super-assistant”.

“We found that nearly a third of PAs make decisions on behalf of the company, 45 per cent manage budgets and half have an in-depth knowledge of their organisation,” says Paul McClosky, spokesperson for City and Guilds. “Perhaps most significantly, 69 per cent of secretaries and PAs around the UK claim they have become more qualified than their employer.”

Debbie Fraser, director of the Bristol-based Commercial College, which specialises in secretarial training, is not surprised by the findings. “Many of our secretaries are essentially responsible for running small and medium-sized businesses,” she explains. “Meanwhile, those that work in much larger businesses often run whole departments.”

Technology has led to bosses learning to handle some of the more traditional administration work associated with secretaries, she explains. Many bosses type their own letters, answer the phone and organise their own meetings, leaving secretarial staff to take care of more consequential tasks.

“Mobile phones have also contributed to the shift,” she says. “They have enabled bosses to be away from the office a lot more and they require a very efficient PA to practically do their role for them when out of the office.”

The economic downturn of the 1990s also helped. Downsizing led to the demise of the middle manager and many high-end PAs, who had demonstrated their organisational and managerial potential, were passed on responsibilities such as IT projects, recruitment, finance, staff management, PR and marketing. Since then, their role has continued to expand as they have been called on to fill other gaps left by redundancies.

Super assistants don’t always start off in the high-powered role they wind up with, according to the City & Guilds research, with 89 per cent of respondents saying that their role has changed significantly since they began working. When 29-year-old Jane Waghorn started her job at the Bristol-based software company Symmetry six years ago, she was doing basic admin work for the board of directors, as well as a bit of reception cover.

“When my boss left, I was promoted to admin manager and I’ve evolved the role by spotting opportunities,” she says. “Now, as admin and marketing manager, I’m responsible for facilities, personnel, general admin functions and I also manage the marketing plan for the company which employs 25 people. This involves managing both the marketing and IT budget.”

By the time Waghorn had completed her degree in psychology and zoology, she’d realised working with animals wasn’t for her. Recognising her organisational strengths led her into secretarial work and she hasn’t looked back. “Being a proactive person and working in a forward-thinking company has led to career opportunities far beyond what most people would associate with secretaries,” she says.

A recent poll by recruitment specialist Officeteam confirms the rise of the super assistant, with a particularly fast-growing number of PAs found to be taking responsibility for key HR issues. The study found that today’s multi-skilled secretary is likely to deal with office management (62 per cent), recruitment (38 per cent), and managing other staff (23 per cent).

“There is a growing divide between traditional secretaries and a newer group who are keen to extend their role,” explains Steve Carter, managing director of Officeteam. “It was interesting to discover that colleagues were more likely to describe the new breed as multitasking for the office generally rather than as the boss’s right-hand man. They have less direct contact with their boss but they have more general responsibility within their organisation.”

More likely to fit into the newer category of secretaries are those who choose a career in administration. Meanwhile, those who just ‘fell’ into the work and see it as a means to an end tend to be the ones remaining in the more traditional secretarial role, according to the report. Qualifications are also relevant, says Carter, with people who are well qualified more likely to be super assistants. A quarter of the survey’s respondents have a degree and seven per cent hold a masters or postgraduate qualification.

Jo Lambert, 24-year-old PA to the senior management team at Bethnal Green and Victoria Park Housing Association in London, fits into this category and believes her qualifications have assisted her. “Above all, it’s about skills and confidence,” she explains. “I’ve had the confidence to try and get increasingly involved in the business and the skills to achieve results. I’m now involved in bidding for housing projects, among other things. My bosses are now quite open about the fact that they’d be lost without me.”

It is often assumed that super assistants exist exclusively in the private sector, she says, with voluntary and public sector organisations being seen to employ more traditional secretaries who are gatekeepers to their bosses. “Clearly, this isn’t the case,” says Lambert, whose employer is in the voluntary sector.

Recruitment agency Office Angels predicts that high-powered secretaries — increasingly called “executaries” to reflect their level of responsibilities — will make even greater contributions to how businesses are run in the future. “Only this year, we have had to open a new area of business to meet the need for senior level PAs, called OA Exec,’’ says Sue Inman, operations director.

In the US, super assistants are making even more of an impact than here. Business analyst Lauren Amis says, “It has become increasingly clear that executives will focus on marketing their product and admins will attend to almost everything else.”

Not everyone agrees that “deep carpet land” executaries are being given increasing amounts of responsibility, however. Ellis Watson of Human Resources magazine claims just the opposite. “A secretarial career is the only one I know of where often the more senior and more lucrative their role, the less hard the individual has to work,” he recently stated in the magazine.

Explaining his point, he says, “Many PA positions are maintained by executives who employ their entourage largely as badges of status.” He is particularly aggrieved by these “armies of well-paid secretaries” who call themselves executive assistants and the like — illustrating delusions of grandeur.

Microsoft UK — voted number one in The Sunday Times’ list of 100 Best Companies to Work for 2003 — is one employer that strongly rebukes such claims. Steve Harvey, director of people, profits and culture, explains, “I run courses on how staff can develop — and show their appreciation of — this group of employees because the truth is they now drive 90 per cent of processes within the company.”

Across all companies, there are instances of executaries becoming so skilled that they are moved into other careers — notably HR, finance and marketing. Judy Purves, 50, started out as a PA at the Islington-based market research firm TRBI and has now become facilities manager. “My ‘can-do’ attitude as a PA meant my bosses recognised my capabilities and moved me into a more appropriate role,” she explains.

But as the secretarial role becomes increasingly super-charged, many PAs are finding they don’t have to leave their desks, let alone their jobs, to lead their organisations into a more profitable and efficient future.