Secretary
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Secretary (disambiguation).
A secretary is an office and administrative support position. The title refers to a person who performs routine, administrative, or personal tasks for a superior. These office employees perform duties such as typing, computer processing, and scheduling for an executive. They usually work at desks in offices.
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Origin
Since the Renaissance until the late 19th century, men involved in the daily correspondance and their activities of the mighty had assumed the title of secretary or in other cases clerk, which contains the word "secret" to indicate the confidential, hence potentially influential, nature of such work.
Modern usage
In the 1880s, with the invention of the typewriter, more women began to enter the field, and since World War I, the role of secretary has been primarily associated with women. By the 1930s, fewer men were entering the secretarial field.
In an effort to promote professionalism amongst United States secretaries, the National Secretaries Association was created in 1942. Today, this organization is known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) The organization developed the first standardized test for office workers called the Certified Professional Secretaries Examination (CPS). It was first administered in 1951.
In 1952, Mary Barrett, president of the National Secretaries Association, C. King Woodbridge, president of Dictaphone Corporation, and American businessman Harry F. Klemfuss created a special Secretary's Day holiday, to recognize the hard work of the staff in the office. The holiday caught on, and during the fourth week of April is now celebrated in offices all over the world. It has been renamed "Administrative Professional's Week" to highlight the increased responsibility of today's secretary and other administrative workers, and to avoid embarrassment to those who believe "secretary" refers only to women or to unskilled workers.
At the administrative level many job descriptions blur into each other; a secretary in one company might be called an administrative assistant in another. However, while Administrative Assistant is a truly generic term, not necessarily implying directly working for a superior, Secretary tends to be biased towards typing-based activities directed by a superior. Other titles describing jobs similar to or overlapping those of the traditional secretary are Office Coordinator, Executive Assistant, Office Manager and Administrative Professional.
Secretarial jobs are popular as they require few formal qualifications and yet can be skilled jobs. At the most basic end of the spectrum a secretary may need only a good command of the prevailing office language and the ability to type, while at the other end of the spectrum they may be required to take dictation by writing in shorthand at spoken-language rates, type at high speeds using technical language, organise diaries and carry out administrative duties which may include accountancy. Other common tasks are filing and fetching papers (or the equivalent files and databases online), and planning meetings.
Interaction with the general public varies from none to extensive, though in the modern US those whose work entails customer service requests are often called "customer service representatives". They are distinct from those called "secretaries" because the scope of their work is smaller. A large urban supermarket, for instance, will have office staff working in enclosed offices in addition to checkout staff, with the latter usually only handling their own receipts for that day's sales while the professional staff must reconcile all accounts daily.
Employment agencies for temporary employment often fill secretarial jobs.
Private secretary
In the United Kingdom civil service a Private Secretary is a personal assistant to a Secretary of State, Minister of the Crown, or senior civil servant. Depending upon the seniority of their principal, a Private Secretary may him or herself be a senior official in their own right. The Private Secretary to the Sovereign and the Private Secretary to the Prime Minister are the most important.
He can be assisted by an Assistant Secretary.
In several continental European states, similar positions (to a head of state or executive minister) are given names meaning chief of the 'cabinet' (e.g. kabinetschef in Dutch, Chef de cabunet in French) in the sense of personal advisory and administrative staff, indeed like a Chief of Staff heading a bureau that may in fact include one or more functions styled Secretary, e.g. Press Secretary, Social Secretary.
Other cultural traditions have one or more specific terms for a similar position, e.g.:
- in the former kingdom of Afghanistan, Shaghasi-i-Huzuri (from Shaghasi Chamberlain & huzur 'presence') meant Private Secretary to the King.