May 14, 2008
The PA with a boardroom seat
Do you have a personal assistant whose abilities exceed their traditional job description? Then maybe you should offer them a seat on one of your company’s boards. That’s what a leading engineering consultancy did.
Sharon Huckstep is the PA to David Bennison, UK and Ireland managing director for URS Corporation, which has more than 50,000 employees. She has just been named PA of the Year by The Times and Hays Secretarial. Having been hired partly to raise the profile of support staff, she originally attended meetings of its business improvement board to take minutes:
But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. In the end, it was easier to give me a seat and let me have my say because I was going to have it anyway. But I still take the minutes.
Ms Huckstep’s responsibilities have included rewriting the job descriptions of admin staff and introducing a mentoring system for other PAs. She says she has a “real business partnership” with her boss. The runners-up in the competition were also impressive, including a male PA who handled a corporate rebranding.
Do you have any tips for managing and retaining exceptionally able PAs? Please share them below.
