New Name, New Duties
Local Chapter Celebrating Evolution of Administrative Professionals

 by Heidi Henken

 

Forget shorthand. Taking dictation? A thing of the past. About making coffee, don’t even ask. As for typing, it’s known as keyboarding now.

Standard parts of a job description have gone the way of the former term “secretary.” Administrative professionals work a whole new terrain now, changed as much by technology as by feminism.

While some offices may still have a typewriter around to use for government forms with fill-in-the-blank boxes, administrative professionals are more likely to be found creating multimedia business presentations, juggling electronic schedules or taking meeting minutes on a laptop computer.

This year is the 60th anniversary of the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), a professional organization that began as the National Secretaries Association in 1942. Observance of a National Secretaries Day was begun a decade later, in 1952. The association adopted its current name in 1998.

Like the association’s name, the last full week in April has changed to Administrative Professionals Week, with the Wednesday of the week designated as Administrative Professionals Day. This year, Administrative Professionals Day is April 24.

Locally, the Bellingham Chapter of IAAP has a long and venerable history as well. This year the local association celebrates its 40th year, having been chartered in April 1962. It was about business, even back then, says Judy McCoy.

“It wasn’t a club of secretaries just chit-chatting; they really worked at their professional development 40 years ago,” she says. “It was very formal. They all wore their dresses and pearls.”

McCoy, co-owner of Camtec Precision Inc., and immediate past-president of the Washington-Alaska Division of IAAP, has that on good authority from one of the first, charter members of the Bellingham group, Beatrice Anderson, 90. Although Anderson is retired, McCoy says she still pays her dues, making hers the longest membership in the Bellingham IAAP.

 

Technology’s impact

Johanna Humphrey, president of the Bellingham chapter, has worked as an administrative professional for 11 years. She currently works in provider network management for Regence Blue Shield in Burlington.

Humphrey has especially noticed the impact technology has had on jobs like hers. “E-mail has changed the way the offices communicate,” she says, giving an example. With that and computer scheduling programs, “I can arrange meetings in a half-hour for a whole department and have more than likely chosen the best time and date for everybody,” Humphrey notes. It’s a lot easier than the old system, which involved making large numbers of telephone calls.

Where typing and shorthand used to be the ticket to a secretarial job, now administrative professionals — or administrative assistants, as they’re also called — need an extensive knowledge of office management software, including programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Microsoft Project, Web-design programs and desktop publishers for producing newsletters.

In fact, most “admins,” as they’re also called for short, rarely type full letters anymore, Humphrey says. Since most bosses have personal computers on their own desks, it’s generally more a case of taking the draft a boss has written and “prettying it up,” she remarks.

Technology, paired with business downsizing, has increased job responsibilities for the administrative professional of the new millennium, McCoy notes. “A lot of administrative professionals are finding themselves in middle management,” she explains. As well as publishing brochures and newsletters, and building Web sites, they’re tracking appointments with Palm Pilots, acting as trainers in the workplace and giving input on hiring.

“A lot of our work is being done online,” she adds. “We’re purchasing online, we’re doing our travel booking online” and “doing more research on the Internet.”

While many administrative professionals are self-taught, having learned on the job, along the way as technology has changed, membership in IAAP also helps them keep up, say McCoy and Humphrey.

“We hear about all the new stuff,” notes McCoy. “We hear what other people are doing in their offices and what they’re using. It all changes so fast, and employers often don’t send staff out for training to keep them up to date. By belonging and participating in our group, you get to try out new things.”

IAAP also acts as a professional network for members. They “bounce ideas off one another” and pass along information which can enhance their work, Humphrey says. They’re also the best source for job leads in the field, she adds.

 

Better pay, respect

For the last half of the 20th century, at least, secretarial or administrative professional jobs have been filled primarily by women. According to historical experts at the international office of the IAAP, secretaries were mostly men, until the 1930s, when demand for secretaries outpaced available male workers. Secretarial schools started graduating women eager to fill the new demand.

Today it’s still a female-dominated field, according to Humphrey. But now it’s a field where “for the most part the salary scale is much higher, and there’s a lot more respect for admins,” she notes.

For career enhancement, the IAAP, which boasts some 40,000 members and affiliates and close to 700 chapters worldwide, offers professional certification. The Certified Professional Secretary (CPS) exam covers finance and business law, office systems and administration, and management. A newer certification, called the Certified Administrative Professional (CAP) includes organizational planning.

The tests cover “some pretty tough stuff,” says McCoy, noting that the CAP is the equivalent of 32 college credits and is recognized by many institutions of higher learning, including Whatcom Community College.

Bellingham’s IAAP is an active chapter, say Humphrey and McCoy. The local group is known internationally for the success of its “impact” or recruitment meetings.

“We’re called the ‘impact queens,’” McCoy jokes, explaining that at last year’s IAAP convention in Toronto, the Bellingham chapter was recognized for “hosting the best recruitment meeting in the world.” Each time it hosts a meeting, she says, the chapter gets many new members.

McCoy estimates current membership at some 70 members, adding that “It’s a real cross-section of our community,” including “the city, the county, Western (Washington University), the hospital and the transit authority.”