Today was our Admin Meeting

[misslynn]

Today was our Admin Meeting and I think it went very well.  We started with an icebreaker - I passed around a candy dish of M&M's, each of the girls took 2 M&M's, then we went around the room introducing themselves and answering 2 questions that correlated to the color of their M&M (stuff like their favorite movie, etc.).  Lots of laughs and giggles.

Then I passed out their goodie bags, inside was a picture frame, a book (admin related), sparkly pens, candy, bubbles, CD's, graphics CD-ROM, and a couple other small items.  I also had a lot of pamphlets and info about the admin profession that I got from IAAP so I passed those out to everyone.

Then we jumped into the work exercise, we didn't get as much time on this as I would have liked but I thought the 'getting to know you' part was more important.  We shared some of the reports that they do, I had my laptop hooked up to the TV so I could show them a few things.  I had them bring all their pre-work on a CD-ROM so that I can make a copy for everyone with all the documents and send them out.

We had a vendor representative come out and give them all goodie bags, thank them for their hard work and talk to them for a bit.

Then we left for a local hotel that we do a lot of business with, they sponsored a special lunch for us.  We had shrimp lettuce wraps for an appetizer, mandarin chicken salad for the entree and rasperry mousse for dessert.  Delicious!  After that we walked the hotel so the girls could see the property and learn about the hotel, we met all the management there and got a fun little gift from them.

After lunch, we came back to the office.  Also going on today at the same time was a meeting including our Vice-President and leadership for our area, I led the girls into that meeting (they were expecting us).  Our VP thanked them for all of their hard work and let them know that they are appreciated, then everyone gave the girls a standing ovation and a cake that had a picture of a computer on it and said 'thank you'.

After that, they were thoroughly embarrassed (but happy) so we went back to our own meeting room and wrapped up the day.  I announced a new award that I am starting, it's the Admin MVP award.  It will be given quarterly, they will be voting amongst themselves who they feel is the MVP and then I will announce it at our big meeting in October.  I still need to work out the qualifications for it.

All in all, I think the day went very well.  It was good to spend some time together and have some fun and some learnings and I hope to make this a quarterly event.  Thanks everyone for your ideas and suggestions!

[linzfoody]

I work for a local authority in Yorkshire and we are currently in the planning stages for 2 admin events this year - the first in November 2006 and the second in March 2007.

Plans are to have 100 admin/clerical/secretarial staff at each, and run 6 hour long workshops three times each, so attendees can go to 3 different ones.  We are covering subjects such as career development; healthcare (focussing on posture, being active at work, eating healthily, etc); information management (records management/retention and disposal, dealing with Freedom of Information requests, etc); performance reviews.  We are also having a "problem-solving surgery" session and one relating to a knowledge-sharing project which I was managing and have just closed called "Good Admin Practice" (GAP) through which we defined and developed good practice relating to 11 areas of admin work to help admin staff work in a more efficient, consistent and customer focused way.  The workshop relating to GAP will go into the tools we used to develop the good practice and put together a network of administrators to help do this.

We hope the day will be an enjoyable one for admin staff - we're providing lunch and, hopefully, having a motivational speaker - and that they'll benefit by having some practical information and tools to take away with them from the sessions and by feeling valued and empowered.  The event in November is to be opened by our Chief Executive and closed by the Leader of the Council, which I think will be fantastic.

I'll let you know how it goes!

[gee4]

Miss Lynn can I come n work for you.......I like M n M's too!!!

Love your ideas - more companies should learn to do these exercises, even just for moral boosting.  Gratitude n appreciation is not expressed enough these days on behalf of PA's.  Companies are more concerned about their sales team meeting targets.

Once again well done.

G

[elkiedee]

That sounds interesting, I work in local government too but support staff are being treated pretty badly here, I think we could do with some of that stuff...

Luci

[misslynn]

I'm sorry to hear that elkiedee, I hope they come to realize how invaluable you are to the team!