What hot topics/tips would interest most admins?

Renee,
How does the APN work? Would like to set one up for our group.

I’d love more info on this brag poster … this sounds like a great morale booster …

I am 50+ years old, and have been an AA for 20 years and I still have a problem with when and how to use an apostrophe. I have gone on-line for assistance as well as bought Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips. Even the experts on-line say that it is sometimes difficult to discern when and how to use it. So, I guess what I am saying is that don’t be so hard on your staff.

Well, thanks Terri, as I am the “awesome” speaker you were referring to. My name is Rhonda Scharf from ON THE RIGHT TRACK. You can email me directly to find out more information at Rhonda@on-the-right-track.com and check out the schedule at http://www.MinuteTakingMadeEasy.com. Thanks for the recommendation. It is a great program, one day long and I am traveling to many US cities, but can completely create a program for your company/association as well.

Check out this link for the 2009 dates and locations.

http://www.iaap-hq.org/prodev/workshoppartners/minutetaking.html

Thanks!

Will this be offered in Oklahoma City?
Thank you.

We are trying to locate a course on Minute taking. Can you tell me what company you used?

Shawndelle, I pasted in the information pertaining to this class – the teacher or speaker was awesome. At the bottom of the email is the website and her contact information. Feel free to contact her. I know that she told me she is coming back U.S east coast in October but if you need more specific information you might want to contact her directly. Hope this helps.

Minute Taking Made Easy

2009 is off to a roaring start with our Minute Taking Made Easy program. Be sure to attend to get your 6.5 education credits for IAAP certification and to keep your skills current (and marketable!)

Upcoming Canadian Cities:

Regina – February 19
Vancouver – February 27

Upcoming American Cities:

Los Angeles – January 27
San Diego – January 28
Phoenix – January 29
Denver – February 24
San Francisco – February 25
Sacramento – February 26

For more information, check out http://www.MinuteTakingMadeEasy.com or send Rhonda an email with “Reserve Me for Minute Taking in XX” in the subject line

I like the ideas of having a Respect class and a Constructive Criticism class. However, how do you get people to sign up for these classes without offending them?

Good luck with punctuation and grammar. I have tried for 10 years to teach my staff when to use apostrophe. They still do not get it. I give up.

is there any information you could give me on minutes?

and I would like to add constructive criticism as well

I agree with all of the above—just want to add RESPECT. I think with a lot of the younger generation, they sometimes forget, or don’t know what this means.

Have you ever used spell check? As an administrative assistant accuracy is very important.

I want to do something similar at my work so these are a few things that I would love to cover:

*Grammar Session
This could cover commonly misspelled words, inappropriate
abbreviations (txt msg), ways to proofread, and other similar things.

*Building Career Skills
This could cover areas on how to manage your life, assessing
yourself, and new technology to help with your overall career.

*Software Training
I work at a college and we use a certain software that keeps track
of all our students. We can run reports, send letters, and such and
I would like to have a training on this software to improve our work.

I would also love to have a guest speaker. Also, because I work at a college, I was thinking of having one of the instructors have a session on Excel, Word, or something.

Hope this helps! And keep us posted!

Mere:
This is great; especially the brag poster. So often the contributions of our company’s admins get overlooked. Management can fail to realize the wealth of knowledge and experience that admins bring to the business.

Is there anyway to get a copy of your super information? Especially the tip sites/shortcut sites, etc? Love the idea of the brag poster as well! Thank you very much.

Ideas logged are great. Do you have any internal process that drive your admins crazy? Learning the process and them presenting it to them is very helpful. The company I work for has an APN, Admin Professional Network, throughout the enterprise. It is a great group.

Two topics that I have used in our full admin staff meeting (admins from all divisions meet quarterly to share ideas, etc) include 1) the two-sentence job description for admins, and 2) a list of resources that are available to admins. Both were well received and generated a lot of discussion that led to increased support for each other. The two sentence job descrition is simply this: To make ______ (fill in the blank) look good (boss, company, client, etc). To protect ____________ (often means protecting a manager from themselves). Pretty much if you look at everything you do as either making someone look good or preventing someone from looking bad, that can really help with prioritizing and processing tasks. The resources I have included can be technical (tip sites or short cut sites for software) or associations or websites designed just for admins (like this one). One other thing that I have done is create a “Brag Poster” of the admin staff in our division. We combined the number of years of experience and education that we had, included volunteer work and travel desitinations and created a Did you know that your admin staff … type poster. Our print division made multiple copies in color which we put in various places in the office. This generated good conversation between admins and managers and increased some awareness of our skills and talents within the agency.

One of the topics that need to be discussed with administrative assistants is that of “manners.” Everyone seems to forget that they still exist. One of my pet peeves is when someone calls your name, one should answer “yes” instead of “what.” Respect and politeness go hand in hand. Also, you bring it on to yourself. Discuss “customer service,” it hasn’t died yet.

I took an awesome workshop on minutes and I found out that I was taking more unnecessary information down and putting in minutes than required. I think just a refresher, short one, would be a good idea. Also, how to handle those days when many things are dumped in your lap and more is added throughout the day, the importance of finding out priority measures and if everyone tells you this is a priority, then confirming with your supervisor or boss. My boss’s work is #1 in on my list before anyone else. ALWAYS