2020 Update: Wondering what are the best secretary gifts? Check out our latest gallery of gift ideas, below. Some great standbys include cash, this cardigan, these earrings, or some of our favorite little purchases that make our life better. 

We still stand by this advice on secretary gifts, but you may also want to check out all of our posts on holiday business etiquette.

What sort of gifts are you getting for your secretary or assistant this year? In our last poll, the majority of people noted that they just gave their assistants and secretaries cash for a holiday present. Still, a small, personalized gift in ADDITION to the cash gift is a nice touch (time and budget permitting, of course) — it shows your assistant you really do care about him or her. So today I thought I'd round up a few small gift ideas to accompany that larger cash gift. (Note that Above the Law‘s discussion on how much to give is more recent than ours — I agree with their New York rule of thumb of taking your seniority and multiplying it by $100, but know your office.)

2021 Updated Secretary Gift Ideas:

1. Flowers are a classic for this kind of gift — not only does it gift your assistant with something nice, but it lets everyone in the office know that you did too. (Better for birthdays, I suppose — it puts everyone on notice that it's your assistant's birthday!) I've always run to the most local florist, but if I were up for flower delivery, I'd try this new company, The Bouqs. I saw them on Shark Tank, and while (as far as I remember) none of the investors were impressed, I was impressed enough to look them up. Their pitch is $40 flat fee, free delivery, no hidden fees. The flowers are “farm fed by volcanic ice melt and mineral-rich soil,” and you can set up a concierge service to remember your choices (and get a 25% discount). They now send the next day (which I think was the Sharks' big sticking point; previously you needed to order a lot further in advance.)
2. Know your giftee, but: a luxe version of their favorite snack food can be a great way to show that you're paying attention and you appreciate them. These double-dipped caramel pretzels look ah-ma-zing, and they're only $12 today.
3. If your assistant loves her daily cuppa, this tea for one gift set looks amazing — I know it would make me happy every day. I first saw it over at ShopBop‘s gift guide, but C.Wonder has it as part of its sitewide sale for 30% off (bringing it down to $33).
4. This little porcelain tray is only $10, and I love the idea of it near a computer monitor — it's bright and happy, would be a nice spot to put jewelry that your assistant might take off during the day (earrings on phone calls, for example, or bracelets while typing), or even just a great place to put the myriad things that accumulate on your desk. Note that some letters are back-ordered.
5. A wristlet is always a great gift for an office friend — they can keep their change, lunch discount cards, and a lip gloss in it, and add their credit card, cash, and phone to it when they grab it for their lunch run. I think Fossil makes some of the best budget leather bags and accessories around, and they have a number of cute wristlets — this scarlet one is bright and happy and only $45.
6. I'm kind of in love with this Kate Spade planner — Amazon has a bunch of cute ones.

Readers, what are you getting for your assistant's holiday present this year? If you're giving cash, how much (and please note WHERE in the country you are, and if there's an easy identifier for your kind of office (“BigLaw,” Big Four, Forbes 500 company, whatever), please include that.

The post Gift Guide: Personalized, Small Gifts for Your Assistant or Secretary appeared first on Corporette.com.

Update: Administrative Professionals Day is April 24, 2024. Some great gifts to get for your administrative professional (other than cash, of course) include:

Do you socialize with your assistant or secretary? Do you consider him or her to be among your work friends? Or do you keep your relationship with staffers friendly but avoid turning it into an actual friendship? If the relationship has swung too far towards “friendship,” how do you bring it back to “collegial”? Reader N wonders…

How do you reformalize a working relationship with your secretary? I work in law and I have been cognizant about not talking down to my secretary, who is also a young female. I have noticed recently she has interpreted this to mean we are “friends,” which is fine. Recently, she has seemed to step up her attitude, and does not make requests of me politely. I don't want my niceness mistaken for passiveness or that she does not need to respect me the way she does others who were not as nice.

Hmmmn… tough question, Reader N! With Administrative Professionals Day observed this Wednesday it's a good time to revisit the issue. In general, I think it's fine to be friendly with staffers and other subordinates, but the closer the relationship gets, the more complicated it gets. 

One reader wrote to us a while ago where she was the only female lawyer, and the group of female secretaries was being very welcoming — in that case, where she already had an uphill battle to be/feel accepted with the other lawyers, I think she was right to keep her distance.

Outside of that circumstance, friendship with subordinates can also be complicated because if the assistant screws up, needs redirection or criticism, or just generally needs firmer deadlines and oversight, all of that is easier to do with an arm's length, professional relationship, without adding more intense emotions of doubt and betrayal (“but I thought we were friends” / “why is my friend betraying me”).

(We had a great discussion on whether a boss should be respected vs. liked just last year.)

As to reader N's question, how can you bring an office friendship with an assistant back to a collegial relationship? I'm curious to hear what the readers say here, but I think the answer is “very carefully.” My $.02 tips:

Be wary of public/private distinction. If it's just the two of you and she's trying to be sassy or cute, or is allowing her bad mood to show through to you, that's one thing and, I think, common between two people who work together. If you feel whatever she's doing is undermining you in front of clients, supervisors, or subordinates, though, you need to sit her down and talk to her in a formal setting, i.e. sitting in your office sitting opposite your desk, or in a conference room across the table — definitely not at lunch or said casually while working side-by-side on something.

(You may want to loop in HR before you say anything to her.) If whatever she's doing is really annoying to you and out of line, even if it's in private, you may want to say something to her also.

Keep all talk related to the office. If you've told her anything about your personal life, assess if you've told her too much — she's not your therapist, she's your assistant. Tell her what you need to to give her context (“my family may be calling a lot today because my grandmother is ill; please patch them through immediately if you can”), but stop it at a few sentences.

If she's telling you too much about her personal life, try to shut it down and steal some tips from our chatty boss discussion. For example, send something to the printer as soon as she comes in your office so you can escort her out and walk down the hallway with her to get it.

If you see her outside the office, keep your relationship collegial. Keep any personal discussion to 2-3 sentences. I think this applies whether it's an office happy hour, or if you happen to have some shared activity outside of work (e.g., spin class, or a kids' soccer team, or something), in which case it's fine to talk about the activity at hand for whatever time is needed.

Especially since Reader N is trying to dial the relationship back from Friend to Coworker, I would avoid any outings where it's just the two of you — i.e., if you've been going out to lunch or for drinks together, lay off that behavior.

Ladies, what are your thoughts? Where is the line between collegial/too friendly — and how do you dial it back if someone's stepped over the line? Do you think it's harder/easier to manage friends?

(In other news: for those of you with assistants, what are you getting for your assistant for Administrative Professionals' Day this year? Here's a link to our last discussion on that topic.) 

Further reading:

• Can a Manager and Employees Be Friends? [The Fast Track]
• Be the Boss, Not a Friend [Fortune]
• Can the Boss Be a Friend? [Poynter]
• It's Time to End Secretaries Day (by Alison Green of Ask a Manager) [U.S. News & World Report]

Pictured.

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What should you do when you're stuck with a bad assistant, secretary or subordinate — and your assistant doesn't assist? When is just time to switch assistants, or even fire the person? Reader K wonders:

We are a small (12 people) conservative professional investment firm serving high net worth clients. I recently moved from front office to portfolio assistant. The young woman who replaced me thinks she is doing a great job even though she was told by management that she needs to work on skills. She says she has a photographic memory and doesn't take notes on anything I try to explain. I prepared “how to'” notes for her, but have had to print them for her repeatedly. She makes “to do” lists but rarely does items on the list. When I try to explain something, she has gotten up and walked off or continues to stare at computer screen. Her history shows that she is constantly on the Internet. I was told to monitor these things, but feel uncomfortable. I am working an extra 15 hours a week trying to do my new job and picking up slack on hers. Needless to say, I am stressed. Management is aware of issues, but not that I am really stressed out over this. How should I handle this?

Wow — I'm sorry, K, that sounds like it really stinks. You say she's been warned; you say management is already aware of these issues. That all leads me to the following advice:

• Talk with management about switching assistants — or firing her and hiring someone new. This person isn't working for you, and it's anyone's guess why. Maybe she's incompetent, but maybe she's just young — or there's a clash between your general generational work styles. (Pictured: SNL just had a pretty amusing skit on point, “The Millennials.”) Bottom line: things aren't working between you and her. Management needs to know that they need to make a switch. If that means firing her, ask management what they need from you to make that happen — it may be a written record of times she's failed you, it may be a formal warning to her in writing, or more.
• Assess what she is actually doing, if anything. You're going to need to prepare to absorb that work during the transition. Maybe you can outsource it to a VA or contractor; maybe you can give her a lot of it to do before the transition to get things in the bank. (If you can, hiring an intern to overlap a bit between your bad assistant and the future assistant might help.)
• Try to learn from the situation. Figure out why this person got hired: Did she look great on paper? Was the wrong skill set advertised? Wherever the disconnect was, you need to put some real thought into what went wrong and how you can do it better next time. There are things to be learned about your own managerial style, as well as institutionally for the company, the office, and the job.

My advice might be different if things weren't at this level (my older advice to a reader with a bad secretary might be of interest; the reader there shared an assistant with a partner in a large firm, and the assistant continually prioritized other things above the OP's work) — but it sounds like everyone is aware that this worker is a problem, and no one is there to white-knight her. Good luck to you, K…

Readers, what are your thoughts — what should you do when saddled with a bad assistant? How much work can you do yourself before it becomes time to fire? How many chances do you give someone to improve? If you do think this comes back to a generational divide, what are your tips for Reader K?

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N.B. These substantive posts are intended to be a source of community comment on a particular topic, which readers can browse through without having to sift out a lot of unrelated comments. And so, although of course we highly value all comments by our readers, we're going to ask you to please keep your comments on topic; threadjacks will be deleted at our sole discretion and convenience. Thank you for your understanding!

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Hiring friends: yea or nay? Does your answer vary if you're hiring a friend to be a colleague/equal versus hiring an assistant? We've talked about interviewing with friends, but not the reverse situation, hiring a friend. Reader M wonders…

I work at a small law firm. I'm pretty junior, but I have a considerable amount of input on decisions about the business. We don't have an HR department or a formal hiring process. We're getting pretty busy and I think it's time to hire a new assistant to help us handle the work. A friend's girlfriend recently moved to our city and has experience working as an assistant in a professional environment. I'm thinking of asking her if she'd be interested in the job – I know how hard it can be to find a good job in a new city and I know she's qualified, so I'd be happy to help her and add some one likeable and competent to our staff in the process. Is it always a bad idea to hire a friend?

Interesting question, M. There are two things that concern me about this situation. First: she's your friend's girlfriend — not your friend. You don't know if/how things will end between them, or how awkward it's going to be if you have to choose sides.

The second thing is that she'll be an assistant — and being friends with staffers can get kind of murky, particularly for women. In this situation there are two considerations here — first, if you and she are pals around the office, your superiors might start viewing you as “one of the girls,” which isn't going to be good for your career. Second, if you know this person enough to let your hair down around her, socially, it's going to be a bit awkward giving her assignments and acting like a boss with her. (After all, you need to be respected, not liked.)  There needs to be some separation between work and life — and to me this is way too little space.

Readers, what are your thoughts — would you ever encourage a friend to apply to an administrative/secretarial position at your workplace?

Psst: we've talked before about using friends to network, as well as competing with friends for jobs.

Pictured: New Best Bitches set of friendship necklaces, available from Etsy seller guiltyeocrc for $4.50. 

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How do you get a lazy secretary to work harder for you — or how do you complain about her to the Powers That Be without seeming petty? Reader E, a reader from New Zealand, has this very problem…

I share my secretary with my supervising partner, however he hardly uses her and often if she doesn't have work to do for me she won't do anything all day. She works part-time and has been a legal secretary for about 20 years. She spends more time walking around the office talking to other staff than she does working. I dictate work for her to do that does not come back in a timely manner, instead she returns the dictated work just before she leaves (despite my requests for it throughout the day) so that if there are any changes to be made to work that needs to go out that day, I have to do it myself.

Unfortunately, whilst everyone else in the office notices that she is lazy, my supervising partner either does not notice or doesn't want to notice as he thinks that she is great. Yesterday I asked her to do a simple task and as it was nearing the end of her working day she went over my head to my supervising partner and complained about doing it whilst I was in a meeting with a client, he told her that she didn't have to do it and that it could wait till Monday! I can't help but feel let down by him.

What should I do? I want to let him know how lazy she is but do not want to face a backlash from him.

We've talked before about delegating work to a secretary, but we haven't talked about what to do with a bad secretary. This is a really, really tough question — I've been there and it is not a fun time. One of my favorite stories was from one of my friend's secretaries, though:

My friend handed a folder containing packets of neatly stapled papers (including a memo, legal decisions, web pages, and more) to her secretary and asks for 5 copies, original to A, copy to my friend, and the other 4 copies to B, C, D, and E. The secretary then went to the copy machine, removed all of the staples, and put the entire collection through the copier — which got jammed halfway through. She then tried to “recreate” the collection of the packets that my friend had handed to her. Let's just say that everyone (from A-E) had a good laugh about the work product they received. (Yes, laughter: let's hope it was that.)

{psst: these are our favorite secretary gifts}

To me, it's a bit of a problem that the supervising attorney told her it could wait until Monday — you don't say enough about the problem for me to get into it, but it sounds like either a) he already has a great relationship with his secretary (or even prefers her to you) in which case, complaining to him is going to get you nowhere, fast, b) he doesn't think the work you're giving her is important, in which case you might want to talk to him about it directly — not about how lazy the secretary is (because again, that will get you nowhere) but to understand whether 1) the work really is not that important, in which case, hey, enjoy your own weekend! or 2) this is the kind of work the firm expects you to do by yourself. Either you have a secretary to do secretary's work or you don't.

That said… as I see it, you have a few options here…

How to Deal with a Lazy Secretary

Be very clear with your secretary. Instead of saying, “Please type this document as soon as possible,” say “I really need this document typed by 12:30. Will that be a problem?” This way, if what she gives you requires changes, you can ask her to do those by the end of the day.

Do the work yourself. Since my friend told me the story above, I'll admit, my own response to a bad secretary has just been to do the work myself. I've copied, typed, redlined, and more.

See what other options your company offers for support staff. For example, if you need something typed, red-lined, or grammar-checked, give it to the Steno Department rather than to your secretary. If you need something copied, give it to Duplicating instead of your secretary.

Move offices. Frequently secretaries are assigned based on where you sit; you could possibly get a new secretary by simply changing offices. It isn't a perfect world — you have to take the time to move your office — but I've known people  who've done this to get away from a bad secretary.

Talk to your secretary. I've had to do this once — one of my secretaries had a few weeks where absolutely nothing she did seemed to be right and, after a pretty large screw-up, I sat her down and tried to come from a place of concern — I've noticed your mind is elsewhere lately, and I wondered if I could ask if anything is going on outside of the office? As it turned out, yes, a lot of stuff was going on in her home life with her children. I expressed my concern and eased up on her for a while, and I felt like we came out of the incidences with a much stronger assistant/employer relationship. In your situation, you might want to sit your secretary down — strive to understand her. I'd make out a list of bullet points that you want to get across to her — for example, the reason that it isn't acceptable for her to give you something as she runs out the door, or why her delay in Project A affected your work in X, Y, and Z ways. Did she have other work that day that you're not aware of? Is it a communication problem — did she not understand that you needed it done in a certain way? It can be difficult but as long as you come at it from a place of understanding (and not one of anger or blame) then I think it's worth a shot — at least, before the next option, which is:

Talk to your boss about her. To me, this would be the last resort — particularly given the facts you cite above (they've been working together for a long time, he let her take off early on a Friday and absolved her of work you had given her, etc.)  I think you need to be really realistic about what is likely to happen, as well as what you want to happen. For example: Do you want her fired? There's no guarantee the new one will be any better, and you'll be known as the one at the office who gets secretaries fired. Do you want a different secretary, say, X from down the hall? Ask HR discreetly if you can change it up — say you get along so much better with her, you've heard amazing things about her, et cetera.

Readers, what is your advice to Reader E about bad assistants and lazy secretaries? How have you handled the situation in the past?

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Reader E wonders what you can and should ask your assistant or secretary to do — and what is off limits. Great question!

I have been fortunate and I find myself a busy exec at a consulting firm at a young age. I am working 60-80 hours a week and just learning how to leverage my assistant. She is helping me with my expenses and time entry, but I suspect she and I could both get more out of the relationship. I've grown up in a world where I can do almost everything myself (like book travel) but I'm struggling to manage my work/life balance. I could use help with just about anything but as I dive into the world of asking for help, I don't want to find myself at the other end of the spectrum where I'm asking too much or being inappropriate. Advice that outlines do and do not categories or mentions creative ideas might be most helpful.

{related: how to delegate}

Congrats to be a busy exec, and a special congrats on getting what sounds like a competent and helpful assistant — they can be hard to come by, so treat him or her like gold! (And apologies in advance for every time I say “her” meaning the assistant — in addition to being Reader E's situation, it's easier to type than “him or her” every time!) 

(Pictured:  Screencap from Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. We're right on top of it, Rose!)

Oh, and PSA: here's when Adminstrative Professionals' Day is:

Update: Administrative Professionals Day is April 24, 2024. Some great gifts to get for your administrative professional (other than cash, of course) include:

{related: how to hire an assistant}

How to Delegate Things to Your Assistant

For my $.02, you can delegate the following sorts of things to your assistant, depending on your job:

1) Expenses / time sheets / other simple data entry. This is what most people will use their secretaries and assistants for, and in some companies — particularly where an assistant is shared between four or five people — that may be all that he or she is asked to do.

2) Grunt work like photocopying, mailing, faxing, scanning, even typing things that can't be OCR'd (or proofreading things that have been OCR'd).

{related: how much help do you have in your life?}

3) Liaison activities. This is where your assistant will start to be more useful to you: have him or her act as a liaison with colleagues, clients, and opposing parties, to schedule conference calls, meetings, and more. Give her access to your calendar (there are ways you can set up a “shared” calendar in Outlook, if memory serves, that lets you only show her *some* of your activities — same with Google Calendar) so she doesn't have to run in to check with you every time.

4) Filtering. You can absolutely ask your assistant to screen calls and even emails. In fact, with a lot of senior people it's difficult to get an email to your target without having it filtered by the assistant first. (I once worked with a Big Wig who, in addition to needing filtering, just wasn't comfortable with email yet — his assistant got all of his emails and would print out the important ones, and he would then scribble a response on the printout and hand it back to his assistant to be typed.) 

Depending on what your work entails, you can even have him or her skim different publications and flag any stories that might be of interest to you. For example, when I was 22 and a very junior editorial assistant at a magazine, I read 30 magazines on a weekly basis for the EIC and flagged different stories that I thought might be of interest to her, either for a story idea for our publication or from a “you should know what our competitor is doing” perspective– similarly, I now have my virtual assistant read a lot of the RSS feeds that end up in the Weekly Roundup.

5) Dictation/transcription. I truly believe that there is a lost art to dictation, and I never quite mastered it, try as I might. As a lawyer, I primarily found it helpful when I had been reviewing cases, treatises, and other documents like deposition transcripts and more where I would find big chunks of text that I wanted to use in the draft of whatever I was writing but didn't want to type them — so I would dictate them. I tried it both with my assistant at the time and the speech-recognition transcription program Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and there is a learning/teaching curve to both.

Personally, I found Dragon more helpful because I could see what I had said aloud almost immediately which made proofreading easier, whereas with my assistant it may have been a few days before I saw the transcribed notes. I'll also note that transcription jobs can vary in difficulty: if you're writing a one-page letter using simple, regular words it's going to be a lot easier than if you're taking notes on an arcane area of law with a lot of terms of art, or if, say, your consulting work involves medical or pharmaceutical terms or acronyms.

6) Research for work-related things. For example, let's say you need to create a number of posters for a presentation — your assistant can call Kinkos and see what the deadline is, what format the image files need to be in, what the cost variations are, and so forth. Similarly, if you're having a work-related lunch you can have your assistant call different restaurants to see who has a table available at a certain time or date; same for work-related travel arrangements.

7) Things your assistant thinks she can do that will assist your professional life. If you're dealing with an assistant who handles everything you give him or her very well, take her out to lunch to thank her, and talk about how you can better use the relationship. For example:  “You've done an amazing job with everything I've given you, and I can tell that you're capable of more. What else have you done in the past? What else might you think that I could give you to do?” Your assistant might also use this opportunity to tell you what jobs she hates doing, or what she wants out of the relationship (maybe she's studying to do what you do in the future; maybe she wants more flexibility with her schedule, like longer lunches or earlier nights) — listen to her, and if you can, accommodate her on at least one or two items.

{related: here's what happened when I used virtual assistants for personal tasks}

Things You Shouldn't Delegate To Your Assistant

1) Personal tasks. At least in most situations that I've been in or witnessed, the secretary/assistant's job is not one of personal assistant. You should not task her with things that have no relation to the job at hand: booking vacation flights for you, picking up a box of tampons, or even getting you coffee on a regular basis. (Although, if a client came to your office, I wouldn't hesitate to ask your assistant to get the client a cup of coffee.) If you have that rare assistant who is happy to get you a cup of coffee on a regular basis, or is willing to pick up personal items for you at the drugstore — again, treat him or her like gold: I view all of that stuff as “above and beyond.”

{related: how to use a personal assistant}

2) Anything that crosses into YOUR job. For example, it's one thing to have your assistant print out pages from 5-10 different websites or scan/photocopy pages that will help you do an analysis for your job — it's another thing to ask your assistant to do a rough draft of that analysis herself.

{related: how to tell your boss you're not her personal assistant}

Readers, what else do you use your assistants or secretaries for? What do you consider off limits in terms of secretarial tasks?

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