OfficePro Magazine - Admins - A Historical Perspective

Secretary:The term is derived from the [Latin] word secernere, “to distinguish” or “to set apart,” the passive participle (secretum) meaning “having been set apart,” with the eventual connotation of something private or confidential. A secretarius was a person, therefore, overseeing business confidentially, usually for a powerful individual (a King, Pope, etc).

Pretty heady stuff. The modern secretary, now known as an administrative professional, began in the late 19th century, with men becoming involved in the daily correspondence and the activities of important people– royalty, parliament and military. Over time, the name “secretary” was applied to more and varied functions, leading to titles to specify various secretarial work. Secretaries and administrative assistants today perform fewer clerical tasks and are increasingly taking on the roles of information and communication managers. Employment of secretaries and administrative assistants is expected to increase about 9 percent between 2008 and 2016.

Secretaries have been around since important people started dictating letters.

The position itself is quite old: Greek and Roman businessmen and politicians used personal secretaries and clerks to manage

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their affairs. The first recorded typewriter patent was filed in 1714 by the British engineer Henry Mill, for “an artificial machine or method for the impressing or transcribing of letters singly or progressively one after another. It was not until around 1808 that an Italian named Pellegrino Turri constructed a typewriter, which allowed a blind woman to write letters. In 1874, American gun manufacturer E. Remington & Sons, which had already branched out into sewing machines and farm tools, shipped its first “Type Writer,” based on a prototype by the American inventor Christopher Sholes.

When Remington first started marketing typewriters, the company assumed the machine would not be used for composing but for transcribing dictation, and that the person typing would be a woman. Flowers were printed on the casing of early models to make the machine seem more comfortable for women to use. In the United States, women often started in the professional workforce as typists; in fact, according to the 1910 U.S. census, 81 percent of typists were female.

With more women brought out of the home and into offices, there was some concern about the effects this would have on the morals of society, but most con-

by Barbara Bassett cerns never came to fruition. In 1928, when actress Clara Bow received 33,727 items of fan mail in one month, she employed three full-time secretaries to reply to the letters. Since World War 1, the role of secretary has been primarily associated with women. By the 1930s, fewer men were entering the field of secretaries.

The National Secretaries Association was formed by secretaries who believed their profession, which boasted the largest contingent of business women in the 1940s, needed its own organization. The group’s motto was “Better Letters; Better Living,” and their three-fold program focused on social, educational, and professional activities. NSA was a “nonprofit, non-partisan and nonsectarian organization” founded in the Midwest where the organization was chartered in 1942. The Association was headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri and was managed by an Executive Secretary under the advisory supervision of the President and the direction of the International Board of Directors.

In April 1944, the first inter-chapter meeting was held in Omaha, Nebraska with members attending from Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. In February 1946, the first national convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri; 200 members out of

a national membership of 2,904 in 115 chapters attended. The NSA expanded and became international during 1953-54.

The organization’s primary purpose was to “elevate the standards of the secretarial profession.” A secretary was defined “as an executive assistant who possesses a mastery of office skills, who demonstrates the ability to assume responsibility without direct supervision, who exercises initiative and judgment, and who make decisions within the scope of assigned authority.”

In 1942, just after the United States entered World War II, hundreds of women were employed around the country as computers. Before the invention of electronic computers, “computer” was a job description, not a machine. Their job consisted of using mechanical desk calculators to solve long lists of equations. The results of these calculations were compiled into tables and published for use on the battlefields by gunnery officers. The tables allowed soldiers in the field to aim artillery or other weapons, taking into account variable conditions such as temperature and air density. In World War II, women joined the military service to take over jobs typically held by men so that the military could send those men to the front lines. They worked in assistant roles,

as officers for the Women’s Army Corps, as code transcribers, as RADAR monitors, and in several other jobs, including military typist, stenographer and narrators.

Once the war ended, while some women went back to the traditional home front, many went on to secretarial positions.

By 1950, the organization had established the Certified Professional Secretary program. The first examinations were given in 1951; certificates were awarded 62 persons as Certified Professional Secretaries. By 1959, there were 1,466 CPS’s. In 1951, the group founded the National Secretaries Association Home Trust Fund, the goal of which was to establish a home for retired secretaries.

And, in 1953, through the work of NSA and industrial management, the first National Secretaries Week was observed.

NSA’s national magazine was titled The Secretary.

In 1952, Mary Barrett, president of the National Secretaries Association (now called the International Association of Administrative Professionals) and C. King Woodbridge, president of Dictaphone Corporation, were serving on a council charged with addressing a national shortage of skilled office workers that existed at the time. Together with Harry Klemfuss,

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public relations account executive at Young & Rubicam, they originated the idea for a secretaries week campaign as an effort to honor administrative staff for their efforts and attract more people to office and administrative careers.

The sixties saw a big rise in the number of women going to work. They took more jobs in retail, administrative and secretarial work alongside ‘traditional’ women’s work like factory and cleaning work. Often their wage was seen as an addition to their husband’s earnings...maybe to get the cash to add on a room to the house, more than as a fulfilling profession. They worked just as hard as men but the culture of the times dictated less pay as men were seen as breadwinners.

Women were mostly limited to “women only” positions – education, teaching and secretarial work, and secretarial schools flourished. However, once women who once were “just secretaries” moved up the managerial ladder, the skills learned as a secretary began to be noticed.. Although administrative personnel have always known their value to a company, companies themselves were just beginning to see the value of well trained admins.

As the seventies came, the demand for workers in professional and technical areas, managers and administrators, skilled trades, clerical workers and service workers increased. As the traditional “secretarial” position changed, so did its title.

Women were now becoming office managers, executive assistants, personal assistants and management. In 1981, the National Secretaries Association became Professional Secretaries International (PSI).

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In 1998, PSI changed its name to the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), to further reflect the expanding role of office staff.

Today, the role of an admin is so varied it can rarely truthfully be referred to as “secretarial.” The largest difference between a generalized secretary and a skilled admin is that the admin is required to be able to interact extensively with the general public, vendors, customers, and any other person or group that the executive is responsible to interact with. As the level the executive interacts with increases, so does the level of skill required in the admin that works with the executive. The admin that works with corporate officers must be capable of emulating the style, corporate philosophy and corporate persona of the executive for which they work.

Admins are normally required to maintain job skills at the current state of the art.

Today, there are more than 4.1 million secretaries and administrative assistants working in the United States, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, and 8.9 million people working in various administrative support roles. More than 475,000 administrative professionals are employed in Canada. Millions more administrative professionals work in offices all over the world. There are countless virtual assistants starting businesses around the globe. As admins continue to make a commitment to educating themselves on their ever-changing roles, roles and functions become broader.

Secretaries will need to be even more highly competent in a broader range of

technical and social skills. Rather than disappearing, as some commentators have argued, this is likely to become an occupation with higher entry requirements.

Employment of secretaries and administrative assistants is expected to grow about as fast as average for all occupations.

Secretaries and administrative assistants will have among the largest numbers of new jobs arise, about 362,000 over the 2006-16 period. In addition to new jobs, many jobs will become available to replace workers who transfer to other occupations or leave this very large occupation for other reasons.

Job opportunities should be best for wellqualified and experienced secretaries.

Developments in office technology are certain to continue. However, many secretarial and administrative duties are of a personal, interactive nature and, therefore, are not easily automated. Responsibilities such as planning conferences, working with clients, and instructing staff require tact and communication skills. Because technology cannot substitute for these personal skills, secretaries and administrative assistants will continue to play a key role in most organizations.

While the history of the admin started slowly with one mechanical invention, the admin depends marches strongly into future reinventing itself all the way.

About the author: Barbara Bassett is a staff manager in Northern California with 15 years of admin experience. She is also a freelance writer, proofreader and really loves her dog.