Management Support Forum

Management Support Forum provides a platform for organisations aiming at secretaries, personal assistants and office managers to join forces and promote the role of management support. Management Support Forum is not itself a membership organisation, but unites the efforts of a growing group of professional networks, management organisations, publications and field experts.

In 1999 the initiative for forming a collective lobby for management support was taken by Christine Davies and Adrie van der Luijt.. The UK platform was modelled on the Dutch National Platform for Secretarial Networks (Landelijk Overleg Secretaresse Verenigingen), which has been active for many years. Christine Davies, co-ordinator of Management Support Forum, says, "The time was right to bring together all these people who had been working alongside eachother for decades, all trying to get across the important role of management support staff. Management Support Forum provides an excellent opportunity to create synergy by combining forces, sharing contacts, ideas and information. The main benefactor is the profession, as together we can form a much stronger lobby."

Participants
At present the following people and organisations take part in Management Support Forum:

• The Institute of Agricultural Secretaries & Administrators


• The Institute of Legal Secretaries


• The Institute of Qualified Private Secretaries


• European Management Assistants UK


• The Association of Medical Secretaries, Practice Managers, Administrators and Receptionists


• The Industrial Society


• DeskDemon.com


• Executive Secretary (Magazine)


• Executive PA Magazine

Meetings take place 3-4 times a year at The Industrial Society in Central London.

Objectives
Management Support Forum UK aims to raise the perception of the management support role as a profession by:

• encouraging support staff to:
  • obtain qualifications
  
  
  • join professional organisations
  
  
  • include CPD (Continuing Professional Development) as an essential part of their work
  
  
  • have pride in being a member of the management support profession
  
  
  • meet the standards of the profession
• demonstrating to those inside and outside the profession the contribution management support professionals make to the effectiveness of UK plc


• distinguishing between properly trained staff and those who say they are