I've been a PA/Administrator for a about 5 years now but like mose people I was never trained to become one. I have been fighting with my understanding of what office procedures mean. Can anyone help?

Stacy, it more or less means what goes where and how to carry out the admin function and support your manager and his/her department.

As PA's we support colleagues and assist them to do their job in areas they do not carry out themselves eg. travel, hospitality, meetings, booking rooms, completing expenses, timesheets, holiday forms, replenishing stationery supplies, preparing/formatting documents/letters etc.

They can then carry out their job as a manager, director, factory worker, engineer, doctor, scientist, lawyer, teacher etc etc.

Am sure others will add their views also.

I would add that a lot of office procedures are electronically stored and in a previous job one of my responsibilities was the upkeep of such documents and forms.

Rules are put in place so that the office functions accordingly and in line with business practices.

I view procedures as the "method by which tasks should be accomplished in a uniform manner". When written down and kept in a central area, all can view.

Stacy,

In order for an office to function smoothly, it's important to have a set of official procedures in place. From invoices to job applications, expense reports to client complaints, documents not handled according to proper procedures can end up costing the company. On the other hand, it's exactly these small procedural tasks that eat up large chunks of valuable employee time.

Basically, "office procedures" are "how to do things": how every bit of the office functions so that everyone knows what they are doing and how the work should be done. You don't have to be trained to know this; it isn't some weird magical concept.

And it sounds as though you are doing pretty well without training!

Best wishes,

Raindance

Can I just add one more thing here which I am sure we are all aware of.

Office processes and procedures will be relevant to the environment we work in and are therfore adapted accordingly. Some are electronically filled, some are in a manual, some are stored on the intranet. Therefore one set of rules does not apply to all office environments.

Stacy we all learn office procedures when we first start a new job. You have learnt them, you probably just don't realise. Rain worded it better than I did.

Stacy I have learnt over the years that no matter how specialised a company is with the most highly skilled staff on board, admin processes and procedures are either outdated or so old-fashioned it's hard to believe they actually still exist.

There are things I would change big time here and also in my last job but no one wants to know or put them into place because "that's not the way we do it here".

If managers would only open their eyes and see things could be done better, quicker, smarter then it doesn't cost much to listen.

Eg. a document was printed and brought to my department which has around 200 people. The department is broken down again and within that my boss manages nearly 60 staff. Now personally speaking I would have emailed the document to each secretary and asked the secretaries to cascade the email down to those groups for whom their mananger is responsible. Instead of the form being filled in by hand, the details could have been collated by each secretary and returned to the originator via an email, saving paper, trees and time running around looking for individuals. We all have email, use it!

You might want to start writing the processes you do in detailed form that way you will find out exactly what you do, when you do it and what the procedures are. I try to do that in every job I go to and then can refer back to my notes to see what I did a year ago without feeling inadequate. After a few years you don't really need to refer back to your notes unless things change quite a bit and you want to change your notes to reflect the changes.

Gee- When I see things that can be done faster, simpler and with less cost / save paper, etc., I just do it. Sometimes it sticks and others start doing it my way.

Sometimes Peaches the jobs/procedures are not mine to change and like the one I described above, it came from someone else to handle/distribute.

If you come in to a new job/company and start to change this, others end up resenting you so not always a good idea to jump in.