Thousands of admin and support staff in the Civil Service are facing redundancy, following Chancellor Gordon Brown's announcement of widespread job cuts in Whitehall. Overall 40,000 jobs are due to be axed, a significant proportion of which will be in administration and support roles.

"There is deep concern over the announcement," a spokesperson for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) told ON! Office Networks. "These are not faceless bureaucrats, but people who do vital work supporting the delivery of public services from benefits to tax credits. To treat them as statistics on a balance sheet is unacceptable."

The swingeing job cuts were announced in the Budget, itself a source of resentment as staff affected first heard on news bulletins that their jobs were on the line. The Department of Work and Pensions will bear the brunt of the cuts, and jobs will also be lost through the planned merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. Around 20,000 positions will be relocated out of London.

"Staff now face an extremely uncertain time ahead, as nothing concrete is expected to be decided until the July spending review," continued the spokesperson from PCS, which represents almost 300,000 members in Government departments and allied service providers. "But we, along with other unions, fear further cuts will be announced."

If you know a super efficient secretary who you think deserves rewarding, this is your last chance to nominate them for the Office Angels Executary of the Year Award 2004. The awards, devised by the secretarial recruitment consultancy, seek to reward the challenging and crucial role PAs and team secretaries play in today's workplace. For more details on the two categories you can enter, visit www.office-angels.com. To receive a nomination form, call Office Angels on 020 8600 0852.

Being a technology whizz, the ability to communicate well, proving yourself as a superb organiser, and thriving in a team environment are all vital attributes for today's administrators, according to a report just published. The Council for Administration (CfA), the national body which represents and supports the development of administration in the UK, has finished collating its fourth and final study in a programme of research investigating the needs of administrative staff and employers nation-wide.

"Our studies have shown that the core skills demanded by employers - IT, communication, organisation and teamwork - are the same across all regions, and across all specialisms," explains Dr Rebecca Strong, Market Information and Communications Manager for the CfA. "Interestingly, we found time and again that qualifications were not mentioned by employers as frequently as was the need for candidates to have good skills and previous experience."

The four studies attempt to discover exactly what employers need from their admin staff, in terms of skills, qualifications, experience and salary levels, now and in the future. The first report gives an overview; the second examines administration jobs in a range of sectors; the third deals with administration on a regional basis; while the fourth provides details of specialist roles such as legal administrators.

"The skills demanded by employers, regardless of sector or location, tend to be very similar," continues Dr Strong. "Administrators across all levels require skills in administration services, communication, planning and organising, and team building." Specialist administrators obviously require a range of addition skills specific to their specialist area, be that legal, medical, pharmaceutical, etc.

All four reports can be found at http://www.cfa.uk.com/research/reports_skills_asfr2003.htm.
For more details on the qualifications overseen by the CfA, visit www.cfa.uk.com or email info@cfa.uk.com

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has been cleared of the "Betsygate" charges relating to the funding of his wife as a secretary in his office. Members of the Commons standards and privileges committee rejected the central charge that Betsy Duncan Smith was improperly paid, but they ruled that the former Tory party boss did unintentionally hand over money to his wife and two other secretaries from the wrong fund. The parliamentary commissioner, Sir Philip Mawer, said Mr Duncan Smith did this because the rules on allowances were confusing, and was not a deliberate attempt to subvert the rules.

The row over IDS' payments broke out last October, when an investigative journalist Michael Crick claimed he had paid his wife in the region of £15,000 to work as a diary secretary, when she was doing little or no work.

Congratulations to two lucky subscribers of ON! Office Networks, Helen Grant and Sally Andrews. Both have won a free training course through the prize draw in our March issue. Helen, PA to the director of public policy for the children's charity NSPCC, was delighted to have won the training day, kindly offered by Spearhead Training Group. "I've chosen the 'Perfect PA' course and I'm really looking forward to it," explained London-based Helen. "Keeping your skills up is very important in this role."

Office manager at Coleman UK in Bristol, Sally Andrews, was our second winner. "I'm very pleased to have won," she said. "I'm just about to start a certificate in personnel practice, so this course will get my brain into training mode again." Sally will be selecting a course from the many on offer from Hawksmere.

We hope our two winners benefit from their training days, and we'd like to thank both Hawksmere and Spearhead Training Group once again for donating the free course places. Visit these training providers for full details on their courses for admin professionals at www.hawksmere.co.uk and www.spearhead-training.co.uk

If you're an administration assistant, secretary or office manager, and you work within easy reach of Cambridge, this could be for you. A new one-day event has been launched by training providers SkillPath, which aims to build vital career skills.

The conference, taking place on 9 June, is structured around ten working sessions, in two strands - you choose which of the sessions you wish to attend. Topics include winning respect and credibility, dealing with chronically impossible people, how to avoid other peoples' power-robbing habits, and negotiation skills.

For more details on this new event being held at the Cambridgeshire Moat House, Bar Hill, contact SkillPath by phoning 0800 328 1140, or visiting www.skillpath.co.uk

A report by the new campaigning charity Working Families has called on the Government to extend the right to ask for flexible working to all workers, not just those with young children. The charity, which gives a voice to working parents and carers, believes that the current Right to Request legislation, introduced a year ago, would be beneficial to all staff.

The report goes one step further, and recommends that there be a right for staff to have flexible hours, rather than merely a right to request them, unless there is an objective business justification for not granting the request.

Working Families was formed last year by the merger of Parents at Work and New Ways to Work. To read the report, visit www.workingfamilies.org.uk A new web guide to managing flexible working for small businesses, commissioned by the Department for Trade and Industry, will be launched on the Working Families website at the end of April.