Creating a new position
Question: I recently completed my graduate degree in business and have been working as an executive assistant at my current company for almost 4 years. I have been doing an excellent job, taking and completing tasks outside my job description, and have made sure that the right people are aware of my accomplishments including my MBA. I am ready for more responsibility and my performance, education and “self promotion” have set the stage for approaching my supervisor (HR Director) about becoming the head of the admin team. This would be a new position for the company, and there are sound, supportable reasons for creating this position and putting me in it, but there is one hurdle to overcome.
I am not the assistant to the President of the company. His assistant is probably the least qualified person on the admin team to assume a leadership or managerial role and I’m sure he knows that. Although she is a very competent assistant, she has no desire to be anything more than an assistant. Unfortunately, the last time I spoke to the HR Director about a promotion within the admin team, her response was, in essence, because I was already an Executive Assistant but was not assistant to the President and because of the current organizational structure of the admin team, there was nowhere to promote me to.
This type of position I would like is usually called either “executive administrator,” “office manager” or “manager, administration” or something similar. Does anyone know of situations where this position was created or are currently in this position and can provide sound evidence based examples of how this position helped the company? — Anonymous
Comments
I am not sure about the procedures and policies for your company, however, within my company I formed a new position. I envisioned our company having a Customer Service Unit that handled all incoming calls and customer requests. I sort of dropped hints here and there. Much to my amazement, our President picked up on this idea and ask if I would “do it”.
I was made Office Supervisor with the responsibilities of implementing, overseeing and reporting back the success (or failure) of the new Customer Service Unit. Guess what, it was a huge success.
As time went on, this Unit took on ordering office supplies, postage needs, etc. which took some work off the other employees and therefore they came on board and supported our efforts.
Today, this Unit has split and now reports to 2 other Team Leaders, but the idea remains intact and has been a huge success to our company as noted by our customers.
Oh, and by the way, I am now the Human Resource Director for our company. I was able to present an idea, plan how it would work, how it would benefit all employees within the company and was able to prove my point.
You might want to try this type approach, if your company does not have any policy against such ideas. Good luck in your efforts.
Posted by: June | February 25, 2005 at 01:10 PM