14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most comprehensive studies of personal assistants carried in the United Kingdom over the past few years has determined that secretaries are still called on by their bosses to perform tasks that go “beyond the call of duty,” such as purchasing personal items for their employers, calling their friends with personal news, and even booking a back wax. Katie Truss and Rosemary Parr, both professors at the Kingston University, have been the leaders of the new investigation, AlphaGalileo reports.
Parr is also the founder of Global PA Network, a training and development company. The team has determined that today's secretaries, while indeed assigned more high-importance tasks, and being better educated than in the past, are still called upon to do things that are not by far in their job description. Many of them are also under-evaluated, under-appreciated, and bullied at the workplace, the same study has revealed. This happens in spite of the fact that they perform better, on average, than their predecessors.
The opinions of more than 1,000 personal assistants and secretaries were taken into account in the new paper, which was compiled by Ms Parr and Professor Truss, who is also the director of Kingston University's Center for Research in Employment, Skills and Society. One of the most important conclusions of their studies was the fact that most employers in the Great Britain were simply wasting the talents of the 80,000 secretaries registered in the country, which could bring a massive contribution to economic development, if used properly.
“I was shocked to find that a lot of things hadn’t changed, particularly career paths. Secretaries are still highly dependent on their individual managers,” Truss, who did her doctorate on secretarial work in 1992, says. “Employers need to reflect on the continuing practice of PAs performing personal tasks for their line managers and their families both from a resource perspective and in terms of the potential abuse of secretarial goodwill,” she adds.
“Often PAs can get bogged down in the routine of the job and as a result their relationship with their boss can be affected, becoming more impersonal. With the right communication skills however, PAs can learn to speak up for themselves and turn this problem round,” Parr concludes.