Office Administration Skills

Training Objectives

• Defining the Administrator’s role
• Understand the role of an Executive Secretary, and impact on the wider business
• Understand effective Administrator’s skills and Attitude
• Develop interpersonal and communication skills in order to carry out administrative functions with confidence and efficiency
• Develop adaptability and self-management to deal with changing office environment
• Learn professional business writing techniques in writing e-mails
• Building excellent relations with your manager and colleagues
• Greet customers in an appropriate manner
• Understand how to communicate with customers, by remaining professional and friendly at all times
• Identify a personal time management philosophy that will help you transform your working life
• Apply stress reducing techniques to a tense situation
• Handle interruptions, avoid procrastination and priorities your work more effectively
• Complete key tasks on time through proper planning
• Learn how to gain effectiveness in better managing yourself and your precious credit of daily minutes.
• Be able to making travel arrangements, and planning meetings and conventions
• Manage and present information
• learn how to set up, arrange, and maintain a filing system
• Learn Project Management tools of creating, processing, and communicating information
• Understand basic writing skills and grammar, and how to create effective business documents.
• Build your computer skills through a combination of reading and hands-on practice while learning Microsoft Office.

Module Outlines

Module 1: The Administrative and Secretarial Professional

• Program Introduction and Objectives
• The Administrator role (Executive Secretary) as part of the support team
• The ‘competence’ model of skills, behaviors and values
• The Three Levels of Effectiveness
• See-Do-Get Module
• Having the right attitude to excel
• Reactive & Proactive Behavior

Module 2: Stress and Time Management

• Identifying and controlling your time wasters
• Setting SMART Goals
• Setting your priorities and working standards
• Circle of Influence
• The 80/20 Rule
• The Urgent/Important Matrix
• Maximizing your efficiency
• Planning and organizing a productive work day
• Chunk, Block, and Tackle (This time management technique is ideal for taking on large tasks).
• Ready, Fire, Aim
• Identify common stressors and symptoms of stress.
• Discuss effective stress management coping strategies.

Module 3: Tackling Procrastination and Taking initiatives

• Assessing work Patterns
• Why We Procrastinate
• Nine Ways to Overcome Procrastination
• Eat That Frog! (Group activity aiming to set the facts that if we have two tasks, start with the biggest, hardest and important one).
• Taking the initiative

Module 4: Adaptability to a changing office environment

• Crisis management
• Mental Foundation
• When the Storm Hits
• Making instant changes
• Creating a Plan
• Executing the Plan

Module 5: Organizing your Workplace

• Ways to keep the office running smoothly and efficiently.
• Movement Vs. Direction
• De-Clutter
• Managing Workflow
• Using Calendars
• Filing and paper work
• Database Management

Module 6: Technologies in the Workplace

• Project Management technologies and tools.
• Network systems used to communicate information.
• Navigating office computer systems
• Practical sessions and application work

Module 7: Travel and Meeting Planning

• Make travel arrangements and generate a travel itinerary.
• Plan meetings and conventions for your company.
• Ways to Manage the Three Phases of Meeting
• Preparing for the Agenda: Before Planning
• Using the PAT Approach
• Building the Agenda
• Keeping Things on Track
• Mini-meeting Exercises

Module 8: Business English

• The professional business writing process.
• Pre-writing steps.
• Editing your writing.
  • Conciseness.
  • Active and passive voice.
  • Parallel construction.
• Proofreading your writing.
  • Sentence agreement.
  • Punctuation.
  • Spelling.
• Paragraphs, well-organized documents, and purpose-focused materials.
• Producing accurate and effective final documents.
• Activity: Identifying (Pre-Writing)
• Activity: Writing the Message

Module 9: Interpersonal Communication Skills

• How to manage office communications and procedures.
• The components of communication, both verbal and nonverbal.
• Effective listening and observation skills.
• Personal traits essential for successful interpersonal relations.
• Building excellent relations with your manager and colleagues
• Understand the challenges while communicating with others
• Projecting self-confidence
• Role-play different situations

Module 10: Customer service and Relations

• Understand why the customer is always important
• Greeting customers in an appropriate manner
• The means of building customer loyalty
• Maintaining courtesy throughout a service
• Handling customer’s queries with care and respect
• Taking customer order
• Professionally answer and place telephone calls within an office.
• Handling Difficult Situations
• Avoiding negative communication
• Components of professional internal notifications
• Real-life case-studies application activities

Module 11: Microsoft Office Skills

• Creating, editing, and illustrating Microsoft Word documents.
• Applying formulas and functions to large data sets in Microsoft Excel.
• Incorporating useful charts and graphs to summarize data.
• Adding, deleting, sorting, and laying out table data.
• Creating presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint using advanced tools, tables, and charts.
• Practical sessions and application work