Office administration still offers a career path, if you’re smart

The modern office is still a viable career path but the rules have changed.

With continued office automation ensuring the extinction of many administrative roles over the past 20 years, what advice do you give your children if this is the path they wish to pursue?

It used to be a right of passage to finish year 10 or 12 and attend a business college, with an assured junior role in an office, hopefully leading to a career. This was a practical career path for many years, even decades.

Most parents would now encourage and even insist that their children attend university, but with recent headlines and data showing the number of university graduates working in their area of study is at an all-time low, perhaps we need to rethink our strategy and save some HECS fees.

The office is still a viable career but the rules have changed. Gone are the days where you had a back office role processing data, pushing paper, typing or simply responding to your manager. These days if you want to get ahead you need to add value and extend the capabilities of your role.

Of course, with the advent of technology this is far more available to the modern worker than ever before, with job roles and responsibilities constantly changing.

For example, the secretary is now the executive assistant, which is often a powerful role requiring good commercial acumen, influencing skills, networking, project management capabilities and a diverse range of organisational and administrative skills.

Often starting at the junior administrative level, those with nous can progress through the ranks, though they will need an interest in business and a willingness to educate and upskill themselves.

Perhaps most importantly they will have an innate desire to help as they will potentially be the right hand to a senior executive and relieve them of all their administrative tasks.

There are excellent salaries to be made for those at the top of their game and it is safe to say these roles will continue at the very senior end of the market.

Roles that will bear the brunt of office automation and new working styles will be middle-management administrative support roles. Middle management is now encouraged to be self-sufficient and can normally produce their own materials, manage their own emails and calendars.

Sometimes they may have a shared resource in the form of an administrative assistant, but these roles will decrease over time given smarter software and sharing systems.

Any role with a repetitive function will be quickly replaced with technology, if it hasn’t already.

Roles that continue to exist will be those requiring the human element, including good judgment skills, customer service, intuition, negotiation, influence and persuasion, decision-making and people handling.

What to advise your children who still want to work in an office administrative role but are unsure of what they actually want to do?

The good news is that a career in the office is still in the offering and one that will change greatly throughout a person’s working life. While the traditional administrative assistant/secretary and such are being phased out, those with strong administrative and project management skills will always be needed.

Opportunities within the organisation to take on new tasks and undertake further training will also be presented, meaning their role and career will never be stagnant and exciting times will always be on the horizon.

Karen Lance is the managing director at qube.recruit.consult.