Secretary’s Role More Critical in High-Tech Age : Service: Profession heads away from filing into information management. Some think the pay hasn’t kept pace.
When Mitzi Ferguson’s employer, Archive Corp. in Costa Mesa, bought Cipher Data Products, Ferguson dealt with the lawyers working on the deal. Daily, on the phone, she represents the president to the company’s board of directors. She arranges the president’s personal and professional schedule and is fluent in several software languages.
Ferguson embodies where the secretarial profession is headed--away from tasks such as filing and taking dictation toward information management. Being a secretary, more and more, means being computer-literate, well-educated and capable of making important decisions.
The changes are being driven in part by technology, observers say.
“In 1980, there was one computer for every 100 people. By 1990, there were two computers for every three people,” said Barbara Otto, a spokeswoman for Nine-to-Five, a Cleveland-based organization of office workers. “There’s been an incredible increase of the use of technology in the workplace.”
The recession has also had an effect on the secretary’s job.
“Everyone seems to be cramming a lot into each job,” said Sue Foigelman, manager of six local offices for Chicago-based Manpower Inc., the temporary services agency.
She said requests from companies now are for a secretary who knows word processing, spreadsheets and d-Base, who can interview job candidates and keep customer service records. And if the secretary speaks Spanish as well as English, all the better.
Moreover, the large number of middle-management positions eliminated during this recession means that certain management responsibilities, such as hiring, supervising and coordinating departments, are being handed down the ladder to the support staff.
The average secretary supports 7.6 people, answers to 1.8 bosses and supervises 3.2 employees, according to a 1991 survey conducted by Minolta Corp. for Kansas City, Mo.-based Professional Secretaries International.
“The secretary’s role is becoming more critical with the flattening of corporations,” said Pamela Rhodes, a training consultant in Costa Mesa and a former secretary. “The good news is, there’s a bright future. There will always be a need for secretaries.”
The bad news, some say, is that secretarial salaries are not keeping pace with the increased responsibility. As Nine-to-Five’s Otto points out, “Secretaries’ responsibilities are being doubled or tripled, but they’re getting no more money and no change in title.”
She blames this fact on sex. Ninety-eight percent of secretaries are female. “It’s been proven time and again that when women make up the majority of an occupation, there are low wages,” Otto said.
Yet, salaries for clerical workers--secretaries, administrative assistants or executive secretaries--have at least kept pace with inflation. Many professions cannot make the same claim.
Salaries have risen by 4.6% since 1983, according to the Minolta survey of about 2,000 secretaries nationwide. Today, 13% of secretaries make more than $40,000, with the average hovering just below $25,000; 14% earn less than $19,000.
Still, there is resentment. Management salaries have risen 5.4% during the same years. Top complaints among secretaries, besides salary, are that their contributions are underestimated, they are excluded from decisions that affect them and bosses don’t communicate job requirements clearly.
This sentiment is reflected in what secretaries said they would like to receive for Secretaries Week, which begins tomorrow: raises, bonuses, time off, written statements of appreciation and training opportunities. This, instead of lunch or dinner, “which 77% of the managers give and only 6% of the secretaries want,” the Minolta survey said.
And more secretaries these days are thinking of leaving the profession. In 1983, 56% of the secretaries surveyed by Minolta said they intended to remain secretaries throughout their careers. In 1991, that figure had dropped to 46%.
Perhaps, though, the lower response reflects that secretaries have more choices today. The job can be more of a steppingstone and less of a dead-end than in years past.
In fact, one career counselor for the Tustin-based Women’s Focus counseling service, Linda Waller, said that 25% to 40% of her female clients have been secretaries at some point in their careers.
For many young women, it is a way to get in the corporate door and start learning and earning.
“Many have found themselves in secretarial jobs because that’s where the openings were when they were 22 and just out of college,” she said.
Also, the managerial duties that have been passed on to secretaries are preparing them to move in many different career directions, said Ann Coil, owner of Ann Coil Associates, an Orange-based career counseling company.
Coordination, administration of people in clerical ranks, helping companies purchase the right computers and telecommunications equipment are among the more transferable skills. With the right certificate program, Coil said, secretaries can prepare to move into personnel, human resources, facilities, hazardous waste and environmental management.
“Secretaries’ efforts touch so many people that it gives them an insight, a knowledge of the company that other people in narrower functions don’t see,” Coil said.
Of those who said they would like to move out of secretarial work, the No. 1 choice was to trade places with the boss, according to the Minolta survey. Second was to own their own business.
Rhonda Yannayon, 37, left her secretarial job working for a vice president of General Dynamics in Pomona just over a year ago. She started her own business, a combination of secretarial and personal services, from her home in Placentia.
Among the duties she performs by contract for clients are showing their rental properties, photographing their belongings for insurance purposes and, for one, visiting her mother in a nursing home. It’s not far afield from what she did as an employee for someone else--and she can make the same money in half the hours.
“I was so busy working so many long hours for bosses, doing things that for years went beyond work duties,” she said. “I didn’t have a problem doing special things like getting coffee for the boss,” she said, “but some of the personal things I did for them on company time--well, it was unethical.”
This month, her husband’s impending layoff is going to force her to accept another secretarial job in a corporation, she said. But this time, she was able to negotiate for a strict 40-hour workweek.
Free-lance secretaries in Orange County formed a chapter of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based National Assn. of Secretarial Services in January, 1991. Its 30 members earn an average $600 to $750 weekly for a 25-hour week, according to association board member Karen Berry.
Sandra Young, 44, is another secretary-turned-entrepreneur, but she has left secretarial work behind. She is co-owner of the 4-year-old firm Women’s Focus. The reason she left secretarial work can be summed up in two words: challenge and respect.
“There was zero stress, but no challenge,” said Young, who was making $40,000 as a secretary at age 29. “I felt I was too qualified, and I didn’t have any control over the work I was doing.”
Indeed, nearly 40% of the 2,000 secretaries who answered the Minolta survey said they are overqualified for the work they do; only 18% of managers said they believed that was true of the secretaries who worked for them.
Young started her company, she said, to help other women determine how to get out of what she calls “the box”--a job that doesn’t use a woman’s full potential, doesn’t reflect her values and doesn’t leave her feeling any sense of accomplishment at the end of the week.
There are secretaries who would not agree with Young’s assessment. Ferguson, for example, left management to work as an executive secretary. She said she finds her job challenging and at the same time enjoys being rid of the pressure.
“Supervising people reminds me of when my children were smaller,” she said.
And there’s Cecilia Ruiz-Smith, a 38-year-old secretary at UC Irvine who works by day so she can do abstract paintings in the evenings and on weekends. Her husband, also 38, works setting up audio-visual equipment for the university, which leaves him energy at the end of the day, as well, to paint.
“I’m ambitious, but I would prefer to channel my energy into my art,” Ruiz-Smith said. “I’m a painter, but I’m doing this because I need a job.”
How Secretaries Are Faring in O.C.
Secretaries and clerical support account for about one-fifth of the Orange County labor force. The ranks of the profession are expected to expand by 14.7% within four years. The average secretary’s pay ranges from $8,300 to $75,000.
How O.C. Occupations Compare
Managers 89,850 7.5 109,450 7.8 +21.8 Professional, technical 227,120 19.1 275,200 19.6 +21.2 Sales 138,830 11.7 171,360 12.2 +23.4 Secretarial, clerical 248,780 20.9 285,400 20.3 +14.7 Service 171,090 14.4 202,960 14.4 +18.6 Agricultural 14,730 1.2 19,300 1.4 +31.0 Manufacturing, construction 296,970 24.9 337,490 24.0 +13.6 Unclassified jobs 3,130 .03 4,840 .03 None
* Projected figures
Secretarial Pay
1991 annual salary ranges, by job title:
Title Range Average Salary Administrative secretary $18,000 - $50,000 $27,640 Administrative assistant $11,813 - $75,000 $27,104 Executive secretary $16,000 - $40,000 $26,441 General secretary $13,500 - $50,000 $21,934 Secretary/Receptionist $ 8,320 - $30,000 $15,065
Help Wanted
The most desirable skills and the percentage of ads specifically mentioning those skills, according to a 1991 study of classified ads in 14 major U.S. metropolitan dailies and three in Canada:
Skill and percentage of ads
Computer (general): 66.6%
Word processing: 52.0 Telephone: 23.4 Personality: 20.4 Communication: 20.2 Organization: 19.5 Initiative: 17.2 Math or bookkeeping: 13.4 Interpersonal: 11.3% General office: 10.6 Bilingual: 8.0 Writing: 7.6 Administrative: 5.9 Shorthand: 5.5 Spelling or grammar: 4.0 Confidentiality: 1.2 Source: California Employment Development Department, the Dartnell Corp. Researched by ANNE MICHAUD / Los Angeles Times
