Office Technology & Practices BTOM_OTP
Many people aspire to opportunities for working in an office of any kind. The challenge is, of course, the infinite variety of how offices work. A real estate office works differently from a doctor’s office or from a bank, to name a few. Therefore, we must focus on the general skills that allow you to quickly perceive what is unique in a particular office environment that requires you to adapt and adopt techniques and procedures pertaining to that specific environment.
The key to success is that you have a variety of skills that may be called on for reception, to do filing with indexing, to type documents, to make phone calls, to send FAX documents, to make copies and bind copies of documents, and the list goes on. Obviously there is no way to prepare for every possible request, so in this course we focus on the most common practices that give you a good foundation for being productive while you learn other specialized routines on the job. This is part of a life-long commitment to stay current as office technology continues to evolve.
Like many administrative career positions, it is difficult to keep information up to date unless we focus on principles and expect students to seek out new information for current opportunities. It is difficult to reflect what is new and current in the office, so to expect textbooks to be updated with great regularity is not feasible. It is important to keep the right perspective of what the textbooks do to provide background information – our notebooks on the other hand supplement that information with a more current view, and notebooks cut through the material to highlight the contents we focus on in the classroom. We also have some different views on the content, beginning with the definitions of roles to prepare for in this course:
- Secretary – it is surprising to see textbooks struggling with this definition that actually reflects a person who manages the office. It is a common title for a senior government manager in charge of a department. In business, a secretary would similarly be responsible for communications and the title still sticks in terms of managing the records for all kinds of organizations, churches, etc.
- Typist – the transition from writing with traditional tools to general computer literacy involved people trained in keyboarding skills to transcribe and format formal correspondence and all kinds of documentation representative of the quality standards aspired to by the company. It is no longer sufficient to learn basic typist skills – most managers and other professionals have excellent typing skills – but there are specialized roles in transcription, including verbatim recording (that is outside the scope of this course).
- Executive Assistant – this is the modern reflection of someone who professionally enhances senior executives’ efficiency and effectiveness by taking charge of their administrative support needs rather than to bog down executives to make them do their own administrative responsibilities.
The role of Executive Assistant is highly varied depending on the particular needs of the executives they work for, and it often involves a significant aspect of confidentiality that makes the job rather personal. It also involves a high degree of “tech savvy” to understand (and keep up with) electronic equipment in the workplace. We will explore many aspects of the role that overlap with other departments, such as accounting where the E.A. helps to build and maintain departmental budgets. Some of these skills will be covered in more specialized courses that provide a more thorough grounding in the subject matter.
Basic skills required in this position to deal with what goes on in the workplace involve the following focus areas:
- Interpersonal Skills
- Personal Qualities
- Office Politics
- Workplace Ethics
- Workplace Changes
- Managing Stress
- Human Relations
- Time Management
A major focus of the work involved is correspondence, customer service, as well as communication in these roles in the workplace:
- Front-line Reception
- Virtual Assistants
- Using Voice Mail
- Answering Phones
- Directories
- Local Calls / Long-distance Calles / Time Zones
- Making Appointments
- Receiving Visitors
While the basic types of duties may not have changed dramatically the tools used to perform the job have evolved significantly:
Office Technology
- Incoming Mail, Packages
- Answering Mail, Outgoing Mail
- Addressing: Canada Post, Courier Services
Process of organizing information for visible and electronic filing
- Be familiar with supplies available for visible filing
- Identify factors that govern retention of records
- Understand the process of retention and transfer of records
- Know the procedures for filing, Apply the rules of filing
- Understand different filing systems
- Ensure accuracy and confidentiality in records management
- Be familiar with ISO and its role in some organizations
Be familiar with office equipment used:
- Printer, Photocopier, FAX
- Voice Recognition software
- Dictation / Transcription
As an Executive Assistant you will be expected to know how these different responsibilities are taken care of:
- Arranging and preparing for meetings
- Meeting Minutes, Meeting Dynamics, Virtual Meetings & Publishing Minutes
- - Vebatim Dictation / Transcription
- Travel Arrangements / Meetings / Conferences – reservations, documents, security
- Managing Travel – advances, per-diems, itineraries, expense vouchers, challenges
Business Case / Value Analysis
Describe E-commerce and banking
- Define certified cheques, bank draft, money order, traveler’s cheques
- Prepare cheques, Compare endorsements of cheques
- Prepare a bank deposit, Reconcile a bank statement
- procedures for keeping a petty cash fund
Career Focus for Executive Assistant
- Alternative opportunities
- Elevator Speech Marketing (short presentations)
- Personal Networking
- Job Search Principles
Learning Formats BTOM_OTP
This course is currently available in a classroom setting (public or company private) with approximately 30 contact hours.
PDF – Certificate Of Completion
This course offers a certificate of completion that identifies the course, the student, and a brief description of the course. To receive a certificate the student must have attended at least 80% of the course sessions. This personalized certificate is forwarded to the student by Email.
PDF – Course Notebook
This course includes a notebook in PDF format that provides the minimum knowledge the student must master in order to obtain the certificate. In the notebook you will find references to other study materials. Students receive the notebook by Email when their registration is confirmed.
PDF – Program Overview
An overview of this study program can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the program link on the enquiry page.
PDF – Current Training Schedule
A list of upcoming training sessions can be downloaded from the website by right-clicking on the schedule link on the enquiry page.
Registration – Service Providers
To register for any training course please look on the enquiry link page of your service provider (from where you accessed this website). On the page you will find a registration request form where you can order the course that you are interested in. The availability dates will be provided to you, along with payment instructions if you decide to go ahead.
|