If you are searching for ideas for training topics for administrative staff, start here.

By Karen Porter

Many managers and lead admins surf the Web for ideas for training topics for administrative staff. These managers and lead admins want to develop their professional staff, often by offering in-house training courses. Perhaps you are such a senior administrative professional assigned as a “lead admin” to guide, train and/or develop the other administrative professionals in your company.

Or maybe you are not an administrative assistant or executive assistant at all. Maybe you are a human resources department staff member assigned by your manager or company’s senior level staff to develop a series of training courses for the administrative staff in your company. (Or maybe you’ve just been assigned to research the information for someone else doing this.)

Or maybe you are an administrative assistant or executive assistant — one assigned to lead or voluntarily leading regular meetings of administrative professionals within your company. And in this case, maybe you’re looking for training topics for one component of these administrative meetings (i.e. maybe 15 to 30 minutes of each meeting of your company’s administrative professionals is devoted to a training or professional development topic relevant to administrative assistants and executive assistants.)

Whomever you are, you’re in the right place. And you’re doing a good thing. Offering training and professional development to your administrative staff — both the newbies and the seasoned administrative staff — can help them and help your company stay efficient and effective.

So what training topics for administrative staff do I suggest? I could fill pages of ideas for you because all I cover here at Virtual Association for Administrative Professionals and The Effective Admin (both my brands) is professional development and training topics for administrative assistants and executive assistants. So to start with, consider the sectional topics I offer to VAAP members which I’ve broken down like this (keep reading below image for more detail):

Those are all broad areas that provide tons of training topics for administrative staff. They are all areas covered in written materials provided to VAAP members (which can be individuals or companies). So if you are looking for some background information or fodder for developing your in-house training materials for your administrative assistant and executive assistant staff members, join VAAP (click here) and dig into the material. You will find lots of written information — ideas, inspiration, tips and knowledge — to turn into your own outlines for training topics for administrative staff in your company.

For instance, “business writing skills” as a training topic for administrative staff could include grammar skills refreshers, proofreading tips, how to better write e-mail messages, proper punctuation guidelines, or general guidance on business writing or specific guidance on writing anything from correspondence to reports. There are lots of tips in the VAAP materials on these topics that you can work into your own in-house training presentations.

You may even want to personalize the topic to your individual company such as having the administrative staff develop a single company-wide style manual so that all of the business correspondence in your company has a consistent look and sound with your company’s image. If your company is large, your marketing or other department has already created this guide, in which case you’ll just want to hold a training session to get your administrative staff familiar with it and take questions on the topic.

“Career management skills” can be about goal setting for administrative professionals such as setting SMART performance goals for administrative assistants or measurable goals for executive assistants. VAAP materials include a whole section devoted to goal setting for administrative assistants and executive assistants, such as a lesson in SMART goal planning and lots more.

Or choose a training topic dealing with professional image for the administrative professional. After all, the professional image of your administrative staff is directly relevant to the professional image of your company; the administrative staff are often front-line employees representing your company to internal and external staff in many ways. Think about it!

“Health, safety, security and well-being” training topics are always in style, especially if you want to keep your company’s health insurance and worker’s compensation insurance premiums low as well as keep your employees happy and productive on the job. One of the topics in VAAP materials is ergonomics for office professionals. Another is stress management for administrative professionals.

Manage office ergonomics and stress and you have physically and psychologically healthy employees. Those type of employees tend to like their jobs more and work more efficiently in them than workers in physical pain or under mental stress.

As for security or safety topics, it’s always a good idea to train your front-line employees on how to deal with potentially difficult or explosive situations with internal or external customers. Prepare now so they won’t be frazzled (or even hurt) later. Plus you may want to discuss security of “things”(not just people)…like your confidential office documents and security procedures such as for who is allowed access to what or admittance to where and how this is done. Even document destruction is a security topic pending what types of matters your company has (or if your assistants are handling personnel files).

“Interpersonal and communication skills” is a hot training topic for all staff and especially a good training topic for administrative assistants and executive assistants. VAAP materials cover assertiveness skills for administrative professionals. That’s one communication skill. Without assertiveness skills, you’ll find your administrative staff missing deadlines and expectations, and this is because they don’t speak up to set deadlines and clarify expectations. Good administrative assistants and executive assistants don’t mind-read; they ask the questions they need to get the job done and they ask for the tools and materials they need to get the job done (instead of expecting their own managers to mind-read too).

While many good administrative professionals like working in support and working behind the scenes, so to speak, it’s imperative they also know how to act assertively. Assertiveness skills also help employees deal with interactions on the job among coworkers and with customers — including the difficult situations.

There are a lot more training topics for administrative staff that fall under interpersonal and communication skills (e.g. telephone tips — also covered in VAAP materials), but assertiveness skills is just one training topic for administrative staff you can teach your staff. Be sure to cover not only why assertiveness skills are important but also examples of unwanted behaviors like aggressive, passive aggressive and even passive behaviors. Most people are not born with assertiveness skills (and assistants are people!). Teach your administrative staff how to use this skill to the benefit of their roles and your company.

“Manager/executive support skills” is so important to administrative assistants and executive assistants. VAAP materials cover topics like gatekeeping, such as what is gatekeeping and tips to do it or do it better. Gatekeeping is key for assistants to better manager their executives’ time (and time is a crucial commodity to executives).

Also in VAAP materials is the importance and basics of developing business partnerships between the assistant and her manager or executive.

Then there is calendar management and email management for executives by their assistants.

All these are training topics for administrative staff that are relevant to manager/executive support skills. All staff know a little about these topics but none know it all.

A final hot topic in this category is training assistants to support multiple managers (or executives), and tips for this training topic are in VAAP materials. It’s, after all, becoming less common to find one assistant per manager or executive — except at the very top of the c-level chain and even then there are some assistants handling two or three c-level executives, pending the workload; some may offer direct support to one and indirect support to two others for instance, but this still calls for tips for managing multiple managers or supporting multiple people. Holding training topics for administrative staff on how the assistant can manage or support multiple people in the company.

“Managerial skills for admins” is what you need to teach your administrative assistants and executive assistants if you want them to operate more independently. So this would be training topics like problem solving and decision making. After all, if an assistant has to go to her manager or executive for every solution to a problem or decision that needs to be made, then that assistant needs to find a new line of work because that’s creating work for the manager or executive, not assisting him or her.

The more independent you can train your company assistants to be when it comes to problem solving and decision making, the more efficient and effective they will be in their roles as well as those they support. Both of these topics are covered in various written materials in VAAP and more to come in this topic category as those aren’t the only managerial skills administrative professionals need to possess. For example, more and more administrative professionals need budgeting and financial skills — at least the basics to assist with this task and manage and track budgets as well as monitor certain expenses ongoing in the company (budgeting and financials is not covered broadly in VAAP materials - yet).

“Meeting and Event Planning, Coordination and Participation Skills” is a training topic for almost every administrative assistant or executive assistant. Few administrative assistant employees are not involved in some way in coordinating meetings for those they support. Some assistants are even more involved such as facilitating meetings or participating in meetings on behalf of their managers and executives or just for themselves. Administrative support staff have always needed to know the basics of this skill, but now they need ongoing training to keep up with advances related to meeting and event planning and coordination such as with Web conferencing or even just utilizing tools like iPads for use in board meetings they coordinate or tools and systems to manage booking of meeting facilities. Whether an assistant is scheduling her executive for a meeting or planning a customer service event (even if working with an outside meeting and event planner), she needs ongoing training in this topic to keep up with best practices.

In addition to planning, coordinating and participating in meetings and events, assistants also are called on to take minutes in meetings. Minutes are never going away; they are an important part of meetings in that they are recordings of company history and employee/meeting attendee action items (and much more). For some administrative professionals, minute taking is hard. It involves listening skills and actively thinking about what points of the discussion are relevant to capture (minutes are not word-for-word transcription). Minute taking is covered in VAAP materials.

“Office Technology and Technical Skills” is often the first training topic managers, executives or administrative staff themselves think of when brainstorming training topics for administrative staff. But as you can see if you’ve read this far, they are not any more important skills training for administrative staff than many other training topics. However, they are important. Just above in the last training topic suggestion, office technology was touched on in regard to Web conferencing or using computerized tools in meetings like iPads for board meetings. This topic also involves video conferencing and audio conferencing skills — whether to coordinate these type conferences or participate in them. More and more administrative professionals are involved in the workings of their companies so they now not only plan and coordinate meetings but are actively involved as participants too (when not taking minutes…or sometimes at the same time).

This topic also covers research skills on the Internet. Likely you or your assistant are reading this article right now because you were searching for “training topics for administrative staff” for your company. That’s an example of doing research on the Internet. And there are many more instances in which assistants need to go online to research topics for their managers and executives, whether it be travel or background information on people their executives are to meet with. New tips and guidelines for Internet research come along daily. A few are covered in VAAP materials (as is most everything discussed on this page so far). Make this a training topic for your administrative staff. Many staff know how to surf the Web, but many don’t know how to do efficient research using the Internet. Efficiency saves times and gets you the information you desire quicker.

Finally, don’t forget to cover e-mail management and e-mail writing topics. That falls under office technology too. Even e-mail apps. And then, of course, you might do training on all the other potential time-saving and helpful apps available to assist your assistants (and managers) with their work.

Oh…and don’t forget the training topics many administrative staff love and that’s just plain ole tips and tricks for using the basic software programs every administrative assistant or executive assistant uses daily such as Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook (as well as many other software programs, but those are usually the most commonly used software in offices).

Also, cover training topics on social media if you want your assistants to use these for research as well as to help you with tasks like posting to your company Blog or maintaining an internal social media site for employees.

“Organizational skills” is a training topic most administrative professionals love because they are always trying to be more organized or maintain organized offices and systems (and organize managers and executives). Training topics in this area can be anything from organizing the office space and environment to organizing the files and record-keeping. “Chaos” is not an assistant’s friend in the administrative field. VAAP written materials always include tips on organizational skills.

“Time and workload management skills” is vital to administrative professionals, even more so for assistants “juggling” multiple people they support (and thus multiple projects). Training topics for administrative staff on time management can include how to better manage and prioritize workloads, and how to minimize interruptions to maximize time available to work.

Another hot training topic for this category is project management; more administrative professionals even without the title project manager are becoming project managers just by the nature of their work and assignments. Project management tips are not covered extensively in VAAP materials — yet — but you’ll find plenty of tips and advice on time and workload management for assistants in VAAP materials overall. Incorporate them into your in-house training materials and presentations for your administrative assistants and executive assistants.

“Travel planning and coordination skills,” much like meeting planning and coordination skills, is a basic foundation skill for almost all administrative staff but one in which ongoing training is welcome because assistants need to keep up with best practices in planning and coordinating travel for the managers and executives and others they support. Those staff they support need not worry about the details of getting from here to there if their administrative staff know what they are doing — whether for domestic trips or the much harder to plan international trips (the world is more global than ever and company staff no longer just stay home and do conference calls overseas; they go there in person).

While some staff still have travel departments that assistants call to book travel for those they support, many don’t have this luxury anymore. In fact, many assistants do this booking portion of the travel coordination task too (after they do all the research too that needs to be done pre-booking). But even the assistants who call a travel agent can tell you there is much more to successfully planning and coordinating a trip than simply the booking procedure. Much more!

Keep your assistants trained in best practices for planning and coordinating travel for their executives. When the travel details seem unnoticed by the traveler because nothing negatively eventful happens during the trip (at least nothing not easily fixed with a phone call to the assistant), then you know you have assistants skilled in planning and coordinating travel arrangements and trips. Administrative staff handle details so those they support don’t have to do so — and don’t have to worry that the details are handled.

Much of an assistant’s work will go unnoticed simply because the assistant is doing it well. Lots of details go into assistant work that aren’t noticed because everything runs smoothly for those they support. This is all due to experience and knowledge of your administrative staff, often gained from training your administrative support staff and providing professional development ongoing.

If you’ve read this far — whether you are the lead admin, human resource employee, or manager or executive mentioned at the beginning of this article — hopefully you have found the training topics for administrative staff you were searching for, or at least a start. I say a start because the topics on this page are broadly described (and in no particular order of priority; the above training topics were listed in alphabetical order). You have to break these broad categories out in the specific training topics for administrative staff you need in your company.

All of the training topics administrative assistants and executive assistants need fall under the broad categories described above. Many subtopics of these 11 training and professional development categories are discussed in VAAP materials which are full of tips and advice for administrative assistants and executive assistants. If you’re at loss of where to start with training topics for administrative staff, click to start here at VAAP membership; join as an individual or as a company. If you join as a company, you can work the knowledge from VAAP materials into your company’s in-house administrative staff training.