Article on the Administration division of a business

by Diane M. Hoffmann

That's a large department. Much inter-departmental activities may be coordinated or funnelled through here, such as accounts payable & receivable, information systems, sales and service, credit and collection, office management, executive administration... you name it, all converges here sooner or later. If there are no payroll or human resource departments, administration takes care of that too.

I remember an individual who joined a company as a graphics designer/DTP producer. During her interview, she agreed to function as receptionist "until the company brought in another person".

The partner-managers had told her about all the needs for rewriting organizational and training materials which included a lot of technical and design activities; being a specialist in her profession with many years of creative design experience, this sounded great. The company made it clear that the reception duties would be treated as a secondary expectation and that the activities would be split up between her and the office manager to whom she was to report.

She was also told that the new production department would be moved from the reception area to behind a partition wall, from which location she could answer the phones, but a support level individual would be placed at the reception area to take care of the visitors and numerous interruptions.

As the weeks turned into months, none of the promises took place. She communicated about it in various ways and then in writing. Even at her high professional level she reported to an office administrator who was really the president's executive secretary and administrative assistant rolled into one. Often, situations arose where the decision from top management was required, but the limited knowledge of the administrator curtailed effective technical graphics production and corporate decisions.

The president of the company did not make it his business to learn about the technical job function, fatally perceiving it as a "typing" or "secretarial" job and left the situation to deteriorate until the company lost a valuable, high achiever Gold Collar worker.


For information on the book "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training" by Diane M. Hoffmann click here