Secretaries (General)
Perform secretarial, clerical, organisational and administrative tasks in support of daily office operations.
A Wednesday at the front office
You are the office secretary at a small engineering company, managing the diary, visitors, phone and paperwork for the directors. It is 8:45am. The directors have a meeting at ten, the phone has already rung four times and a courier is waiting at the door.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
I have just been told the client is coming at ten, not eleven. The meeting room is booked by the sales team. I need that room and a coffee tray ready. Can you sort it out?
Move the sales team's booking without asking, since the client is more important
The sales team arrive to find their room gone and a presentation in the middle of preparation. You have fixed one problem and made another, and everyone is unhappy.
Ask the sales team to swap, offer them the other room and order coffee
They swap with a smile. You set up the room and the coffee arrives at nine forty-five. Asking before moving someone is faster than dealing with the fallout.
Tell Mr Bannon the room is booked and he will need to change the client's time
Mr Bannon is unhappy, and the client has to be called. You protected the booking, but a solution was available if you had checked.
I have an appointment with Mr Bannon at ten. I am early, I am afraid. I have come a long way. Should I wait here or is there somewhere I can sit down?
Welcome her warmly, offer a seat and a drink and update Mr Bannon
She relaxes, and Mr Bannon gets a clear idea of timing. Welcoming people is not a small task. It sets the tone for the whole visit.
Seat her in reception with a drink and tell Mr Bannon she has arrived early
She is comfortable and Mr Bannon knows. But the meeting room is still not set up, and he now feels rushed. You told him, though you could also have said how long it would be.
Tell her that Mr Bannon is busy and ask her to come back later
She has travelled a long way and feels unwelcome. First impressions of a company often come from the person at the desk.
I took some cash from the petty cash tin to put towards a supplier delivery this morning. I will write it down later. I just thought you should know in case the tin looks short.
Thank him, write the amount and reason in the book yourself and ask him to initial it
It takes thirty seconds. The tin balances at the end of the month, and Colin is not made to feel suspected. Light systems hold up when staff are friendly.
Say thanks and trust him to write it down later
He does it a week later, and the tin is out of balance in the meantime. Petty cash tracks small amounts, and small gaps can grow.
Say nothing and top up the tin from your own purse so it looks right
The tin balances on paper, but there is no record of what happened, and your own money is now mixed up with the company's. Hiding a gap is worse than recording it.
How it went
By lunchtime the directors are in their meeting, the courier has gone and the tin balances. A secretary is the hub of an office, steady when the day changes shape. Would you like being the person who knows where everything is?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The file that could not be found
A fictional case set in the front office of a family-run engineering company with about thirty staff.
The situation
At Harrow Engineering, Noor was the office secretary. On a Monday morning the director, Mr Bannon, asked her urgently for a signed copy of a supplier agreement. A client's lawyer needed it by noon. It was not in the filing cabinet where it should have been. Noor knew the document had been signed three months before, but nobody could say who had last handled it.
What they did
She retraced the steps. She checked the scanned folder, searched the email of the person who had organised the signing, then asked the receptionist who had covered that day. The original had been put in the wrong client's folder. She found it, scanned it and sent a copy to the director with ten minutes to spare. Afterwards she made a simple log of signed papers and where they were stored.
How it turned out
The deadline was met and Mr Bannon thanked her. The log was copied by two other departments. Noor said what she enjoyed most was being the person people trusted to know where things were.
What would you do?
- What would you have checked first when the paper was not in its folder?
- How would you tell a director that something is lost without panicking?
- Why does a simple system help when a busy office has many people handling papers?