Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504210086
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN LEVIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The flickering screen either is used to send e-mail memos and perform a few other trivial tasks, or it has radically changed the relationship between the executive and the secretary.
What traditionally has been an interdependent relationship with the secretary responding to the boss's needs, now is one of independence, said Virginia Tech sociology Professor William Snizek.
"Secretaries have to carve out a new niche for themselves," he said. "To justify their positions they have become more of the office specialist: faxing, setting up teleconferences, becoming communications experts," without waiting for detailed instructions from the boss.
Managers with computers and basic skills for using them, conversely, are doing more clerical work and less managing, he said. "If you ask the executive about the computer on his desk, chances are he'll say it has increased productivity. But that's open to question. Executives are busier but they're busy doing clerical work," Snizek said.
While Snizek's line of thinking might suggest that secretaries are becoming expendable, Priscilla Stewart said technology has raised their status and made them more valuable to organizations.
Stewart, sales secretary for Double Envelope Corp. in Roanoke, also is president of the Roanoke chapter of Professional Secretaries International, a trade group that today begins its annual observance of Professional Secretaries Week. The organization represents about 27,000 of the country's 3.3 million secretaries, typists, stenographers and executive assistants.
It used to be that "when you said you were a secretary, the question was who you worked for," Stewart said. "Now, it's assumed you have certain skills," likely to include computer capabilities.
"Rather than just answering the telephone, being a buffer for your boss and doing typing, now we're doing billing; and reports that used to take a week or so to do, I can do in an hour.
"I'm still doing old-fashioned secretarial duties but the computer means I'm doing more," she said. For the extra work, the average American secretary is paid $27,147 a year, Professional Secretaries International said.
"When we started this computer revolution, the assumption was there would be less work for the secretary and companies could reduce their work forces," said Bernard Taylor III, head of the department of management science at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business. "But that has not happened; there is more information to be processed."
For some it has been as simple as putting down a pencil and picking up a keyboard and doing work much faster, he said.
"That's making a big assumption that the boss can type," quipped Edgar Heurtematte, a senior systems consultant at Entre Computer Center.
While some executives think they want "the biggest, baddest, meanest PC," Heurtematte said he generally advises giving the secretary more electronic firepower. His advice is based on an assumption the boss is using a computer mostly for reading text, concentrating on one thing at a time, while the secretary is juggling several tasks and needs a machine that functions as both word-processer and filing cabinet.
But he warns it may be prudent to consider more powerful machines for bosses for coming technology that will include teleconferencing and multimedia access to information.
by CNB