Having female managers on the board improves a company's share price, according to new research from Skema business school.

Shares in these firms have risen by 60% from 2006 to 2016, despite the overall benchmark falling by 4.43% in the period.

Women take competition with other women at work too seriously and it could be damaging their careers, new research from UCL School of Management reveals.

Competition with female co-workers taxes women's work relationships. Women could struggle to interact with female co-workers, becoming overly cutthroat and mean, which can restrict their career progression.

The survey of 1,005 office workers revealed that the average worker attends 3.7 meetings every week, spending one hour nine minutes preparing for each meeting and one hour 22 minutes actually attending it.

In any given working week, this means that office workers are spending more than a day preparing for, and attending meetings. Across a 40 year career, this equates to a total of 17,470 hours - two entire years of someone's life or around 10 years of work time.

Administrative staff, from front end reception, to administrative assistant often perform the same duties. Their job descriptions list filing, file management, sorting mail, correspondence management, a few accounting duties, answering the phones and customer service.

How then, is the job-searching administrative professional to distinguish herself?

Everyone knows good help is hard to find. If you are an executive searching for a top-flight assistant - or even the other way around - it helps to know what you are looking for.

A friend of mine recently interviewed for a position as executive assistant to a CEO, and since I also happen to be the head of a company, she turned to me for some insight. She especially wanted to know what I consider to be the five most important attributes of an outstanding assistant.