The Chartered Institute of Administrators and Management Consultants (CIAMC)- Ghana has held its second annual Admin professionals conference, on the theme "Admin, the pulse of the office in crises situations".

The conference, which was held via zoom was in recognition of the pivotal role secretaries, office managers, administrative executives and officers play in the success and survival of organizations in today’s challenging business environment.

It is also devoted to celebrating treasured Administration staff, considering the amount of work that they do, and at the end encouragement practitioners to unite in their resolve and efforts to make Administration a profession of choice.

Mr Paul Kwatei Hammond, Chairman, CIAMC Board of Trustees, said the theme for the conference reflected the growing recognition of the power of administration, and importance of bringing professionalism in all spheres of office management.

He said Administrative Professionals’ week since 1995 have been celebrated internationally in recognition of the pivotal role secretaries, office managers, administrative executives and officers played in the success and survival of organizations, but had gone through several transformations to reflect changing administrative job titles and responsibilities in the modern economy.

He said from next year, the last week of April in each year would be dedicated to the celebration of administrators and general office support staff and for 2021, Administrative Professionals Day would be celebrated on the Wednesday of the Admin Professionals Week.

Mr Hammond said in these challenging times of COVID-19, experts recommend that office managers must begin to think of their staff as freelance workforce with a range of skillsets beyond their pre-crisis set of activities and deploy them accordingly.

This forcefully brings to bear the need for Admin Professionals to uplift their skillsets well beyond the norm, and embrace the challenges and opportunities of IT in the execution of their diverse tasks and obligations.

"We need to be proactive in recognising quality service delivery, customer interest protection and office image enhancement in response to the radical changes ahead.

“Addressing this future calls for the re-organisation of all Admin Professionals towards standardisation of skills and practices and the bringing together of administrators across all sectors to unite for personal, corporate, and national development, which we embarked on in 2019."

He said the conference was expected to create high awareness among administrators about the pivotal role they played and the need to improve the integrity of the administration career, sensitisation the general public on the pivotal role of the administrator in the firm’s successful operations, and also to launch the 2021 Appreciation Day and Awards criteria.

Mr Paul Effah, President, Randford University Collage, said speaking on the Future of work, noted that despite the impact of COVID-l9, organisations that were most creative and innovative in their approach to work were capturing larger shares of their respective markets.

Online business and the use of modern technologies had become the medium through which work was transacted.

He said no one knew when COVlD-l9 would leave humanity, however what was certain was that with or without COVlD-l 9, the future of work would not be the same. Even before the onset of COVlD-l9 pressures from the global environment had led to the innovations that had changed the nature of work.

This, he said, would create challenges for organisations to address, and they would continually have to look for ways to better serve their customers.

"Institutions should take advantage of the characteristics of the generation to mould them to acquire the new skills for the socio-economic development and transformation of society as we move into the future. They are the ones who would be required to address future problems that are not yet on the radar and use technologies that are yet to be invented."

Mr Effah added that workers who were already in the system would have to be retained to fit into the new mode of work which would require self-discipline and commitment and ability to work under little or no supervision in a decentralised environment.

Dr Mrs Regina Gyampo-Vidogah, Director ICT Services, University of Cape Coast speaking on manual and E-records management, said record management was organizational function devoted to the management of information in an organization throughout its life cycle, from the time of creation or inscription to its eventual disposition.

She said records management could be manual, electronic and hybrid, and some challenges of records management include inadequate professionally trained records managers, lack of funding to facilitate proper records management practices, insufficient space for records keeping, misplacement of vital records, lack of record retention, resistant to change, understanding between information; data; records; documents and knowledge management, among others. However, the benefits of electricity records outweigh that of manual.

Addressing the issue of difficult and crucial conversation at the workplace, Dr Mrs Margaret Amoakohene, Head Department of Communication Studies, University of Ghana, advised administrators to ensure to establish open lines of communication, ensure communication was vertical and find positive terms of addressing such communications to ease the tensions around such conversations on employees.