A Working Day for an Executive Assistant

I got out of bed at 7am and got in a 30 minutes gym session. This is great way for me to start the day and I am usually quite good at getting up in time.

On from the gym to the 8:15am train for my half hour commute. My manager called me and asked me to cancel some meetings early this morning. He had some urgent business to handle and would not be able to attend his usual meetings.

I got to the office at 8:55, due to a signalling issue. I did not have time to cancel his 9am, so I went straight to the meeting room and gave his apologies in person. I got back to my desk and trawled his morning diary, I quickly cancelled all of his meetings and rebooked them for the end of this week.

I processed some team expenses claims and some holiday requests. In both cases, I have to check that the suitable approvals have been attained. Once we have the approval, I book the items into our system. However, there was an issue with the holiday request, as we needed approval from my manager for holiday request at Christmas. Therefore, I had to hold the request pending my manager seeing the holiday request. This does not always make me the most popular member of staff, but it is not my decision.

I attended a meeting at 12:15 which required me to take some minutes. I am not always comfortable taking minutes, as the team use a lot of technical terms. This meeting was a bit of a nightmare.

I went for a nice long lunch as I had nothing in particular on. This was great and I make the most of it when I can, as my days can be hectic. I spent the afternoon helping my boss prepare some PowerPoint presentations for a meeting this evening. This also required me liaising with other department to get them to supply parts of the presentation.

I finally got the presentation completed by 4:45, which was perfect timing. However, my boss asked me to handle some correspondence at that time. This was a bit of a disaster as this could take some time. I finished shortly after 6pm and managed to leave the office. I was home by 7pm, generally a pretty normal day. Hectic and dynamic work routines are typical in this field. You need to be able to adapt and problem solve, to do this job.