Personal assistant

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Former U.S. President Barack Obama with Personal Secretary to the President Katie Johnson President Barack Obama listens to Senior Advisor David Axelrod in the outer Oval Office on June 26, 2009.jpg
Former U.S. President Barack Obama with Personal Secretary to the President Katie Johnson

A personal assistant, also referred to as personal aide (PA) or personal secretary (PS), is a job title describing a person who assists a specific person with their daily business or personal task. [1] [2] It is a subspecialty of secretarial duties.

Contents

Duties, responsibilities and functions

An assistant helps with time and daily management, of meetings, correspondence, and note-taking. The role of a personal assistant can be varied, such as answering phone calls, taking notes, scheduling meetings, emailing, texts, etc.

In business or personal contexts, assistants are people who provide services that relieve his or her employer from the stress of tasks that are associated with managing one's personal and/or business life. They assist with a variety of life management tasks, including running errands, arranging travel (e.g., travel agent services such as purchasing airline tickets, reserving hotel rooms and rental cars, and arranging activities, as well as handling more localized services such as recommending a different route to work based on road or travel conditions), finance (paying bills, buying and selling stocks), and shopping (meal planning, remembering special occasions like birthdays).

An Assistant often acts as the manager's first point of contact with people from both inside and outside the organization. This means that his/her tasks and skills can often be divided into two fields: technical skills, and personal skills.

Tasks may include but are not limited to:

In addition to supporting managers, their team and departments, many PA's also have their own personal workload and responsibilities. The scope of the PA's role can be extensive and additional duties may include:

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secretary</span> Office occupation supporting management

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Receptionist</span> Employee who greets guests and occasionally acts as secretary

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References

  1. "Personal assistant: Job description | Prospects.ac.uk". Archived from the original on 2012-05-27. Retrieved 2012-07-03.
  2. "Chronemics in Communication". Archived from the original on 2023-10-20. Retrieved 2023-10-07.