I was looking at my calendar earlier this week and marked on my calendar, on the 26th of April, lies a special holiday. The holiday is a day that honors and celebrates professionals in the workplace, however, it is reserved for only a certain type of professional. No, the professional is not a engineer, architect, or a nurse (those days fall on February, October 2, and May 6 respectively even though it may occur on other days on different calendar years). The profession is quite unique because it is often overlooked. That holiday is Administrative Professional's Day.

You might ask yourself, what is an administrative professional? Their function is to provide a wide array of support to a workplace environment. An administrative professional's career can spread across a variety of industries and can have multiple titles. For example, they can work for any company, agency, hospital, or any governmental organization and the administrative professional job titles may be listed as a Secretary, Office Assistant, Receptionist, Office Manager, Office Administrator, or Administrative Assistant. Their functions include providing assistance to guests that come in, setting up meetings, cleaning and providing a safe and clean working environment, replenishing and stocking up supplies.

Here is a bit of history about the holiday. During the second world war, there was an immense shortage need for skilled administrative personnel, particularly in the United States. The National Secretaries Association was formed to recognize the contributions of secretaries and other administrative personnel to the economy, to support their personal development and to help attract people to administrative careers in the field. The association's name was changed to Professional Secretaries International in 1981 and, finally, the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP) in 1998.

These changes in name reflected the changing nature of the tasks, qualifications and responsibilities of the members of the organization. IAAP now has an international orientation and continues to provide education and training and set standards of excellence recognized by the business community on a global perspective. The organization's vision is "to inspire and equip all administrative professionals to attain excellence".

The first National Secretaries Week was organized in 1952 in conjunction with the United States Department of Commerce and various office supply and equipment manufacturers. In 2000, IAAP announced that names of the week and the day were changed to Administrative Professionals Week and Administrative Professionals Day to keep pace with changing job titles and expanding responsibilities of the modern administrative workforce. Many work environments across the world observe this event.

So now that you know that this week was Admin Week, please be sure to thank your office manager or receptionist. They will be incredibly thankful that you did.