Administrative Assistant Journey

Whether you're an office administrator, an office assistant, a personal assistant, or an administrative assistant, to achieve professional success and enhance the value of your role, you need to optimize your knowledge of administrator essentials. Mastering skills that every administrative professional needs to perform will prepare you for handling wide-ranging and ever-changing tasks. In this course, you'll learn the classification systems for sorting records, key tasks in arranging business travel, and the steps for planning, scheduling, and recording meetings.

Whether you're an office administrator, an office assistant, a personal assistant, or an administrative assistant, job satisfaction and career advancement require you to build a partnership with your boss. Good boss relationships involve mastering administrator essentials, dealing effectively with different management styles and handling confrontations. In this course, you'll learn about building and maintaining a true partnership with your boss and how this can be beneficial. You'll also discover approaches for dealing with different management styles, as well as various techniques for handling any confrontations you may have with your boss.

Dealing with people on a daily basis can be both rewarding and challenging. Whether you're an office administrator, an office assistant, a personal assistant, or an administrative assistant, it's important to be able to handle various encounters in a professional and effective manner. Mastering administrator essentials and good peer relationships will increase your efficiency, job satisfaction, and career advancement. In this course, you'll learn how to master the skills of being an administrative support professional. You'll also learn how to interact effectively with colleagues by asking for help from others, dealing with criticism, and building trust, morale, and respect.

Mastering administrator essentials requires working on your communication skills. Whether you're an office administrator, an office assistant, a personal assistant, or an administrative assistant, you'll need to navigate the world of office politics while trying to remain true to who you are. In this course, you'll explore best practices for making a good impression as an administrative professional. You'll learn about projecting a professional image by building credibility, communicating honestly, respecting others, and practicing positive office politics.

Skilled note taking can make you more productive in business situations. Writing notes and engaging in written communication also provide an effective record to review when necessary. In this course, you'll learn tools, techniques, and grammar strategies for effective note taking in interviews and meetings. You'll also learn ways to write notes that help you learn and recall information, to make it easier to communicate to others.

Spelling errors are all too common, and are one of the main culprits behind poor business writing. A wrong letter here, an extra letter there, and your reader may lose confidence in your communication skills and overall competence as a professional. That's why writing well doesn't just mean writing persuasively - it also means knowing the rules, as well as the exceptions, of spelling. In this course, you'll learn how to spell words with prefixes and suffixes, and how to form the plural and possessive forms of words. You'll also learn general rules on how to spell correctly, as well as some handy tips for better writing in general.

Writing well is not just about constructing logical sentences. It also involves the correct use of abbreviations, capital letters, and numbers in your business writing. Knowing how to use them consistently is a strong asset to have as part of your communication skills. In this course, you'll learn the basic rules of capital letters, abbreviations, and numbers. You'll learn how to correctly abbreviate titles, names, locations, and countries, as well as how to capitalize direct quotes, titles, names of organizations, and product names, among other elements. In addition, you'll explore other key elements for better writing - the forms and uses of numbers with dates and time, money, fractions, and symbols.

Syntax is the grammatical term for arranging words to create logical phrases, clauses, and sentences. Well-constructed sentences express an idea by using the parts of speech in a logical order, and are essential for effective business writing. A misplaced modifier might get a chuckle out of the reader, but it reflects poorly on your communication skills. In this course, you'll learn some of the fundamentals for better writing - the parts of a sentence, such as the subject and predicate, as well as phrases and clauses. You'll examine subject-verb agreement, as well as agreement between pronouns and their antecedents. You'll also discover some techniques for writing well, such as how to identify and fix common types of sentence errors.

The many nuances and conventions in the English language make it diverse and interesting; however, when it comes to writing well, they can also cause some difficulties. For better writing skills, you must familiarize yourself with some of the most common errors of usage. In this course, you'll learn how to use commonly confused words correctly, including word pairs that sound alike and those that have related meanings. You'll explore often misused verbs - for example, affect and effect or apprise and appraise - that can impede professional business writing. You'll also learn some idiomatic combinations of verbs and prepositions that can be confusing and will put your communication skills to the test.

Organizing your physical and digital workspaces is a great way to be more productive. When you declutter your workspace, you can improve many aspects of your work day, including your ability to concentrate, achieve targets, and become more efficient. This course will help you increase your productivity by showing you how to organize and maintain both your physical and digital workspaces. You'll learn the rewards of organizing your workspace and find out what a productive workspace looks like. You'll learn how to use your organization skills to manage your digital workspace. And finally, you'll find out how to make your new clutter-free life last by making organization a habit.

Procrastination reduces your productivity while causing you stress at the same time. Procrastinating is a habit that causes urgent and difficult tasks to pile up as you studiously avoid them. Developing and applying organization skills, you can declutter your schedule and avoid putting off work that demands your attention. In this course, you'll learn about the reasons people procrastinate, and the benefits of organizing your time. You'll learn how to build self-discipline and combat time wasters, as well as how to bring more organization to your day. And finally, you'll explore how to set priorities and how to say no when you need to.

The amount of time available to you is constant - you can't buy more and you can't save it for later. However, by managing your time, you can increase your productivity. And the better you understand your own personal productivity, the easier it will be to manage your time effectively. In this course, you'll learn about how you can use task management to maximize your productivity. You'll discover the benefits of using time management and assessing the value of your tasks. You'll learn about benefits of setting goals and how productivity is tied to your ability to assess time and set priorities. And you'll also learn about the process of "chunking" your time and how to use different types of to-do lists effectively.

Even if you know what's important to do, losing focus can stop your progress. No matter who you are or what job you do, focusing at work can be hard. Even with great schedule management and organizing skills, it's easy to get off track if you're not careful. In this course, you'll learn how to stay focused and stay on top of your schedule. You'll learn strategies for dealing with focus challenges and distractions at work. You'll also find out how to beat fatigue, manage your time, and decline work-related requests. And you'll explore how to adjust your focus to deal with change, and how to regain focus when you've lost it.

Even when you know your priorities and have an organized time management routine, you'll still be challenged every day by distractions, temptations, interruptions, and procrastination. To avoid causing internal time management detours, you have to develop ways to stay focused, and this often means using personal and interpersonal skills in very specific ways. In this course, you'll learn strategies to manage challenges to your personal focus, techniques to help you shut out distractions and manage time conflicts, and ways to regain focus and develop mental resilience when faced with change.

A positive workplace is paramount to your organization's long-term success. As a manager, you play a key role in establishing a positive work culture, and noticing when negativity takes the place of positivity. As a leader, you can foster a positive work environment by communicating honestly, respecting, supporting, and engaging others, and maintaining a good attitude. This course will introduce you to best practices for creating a positive work environment. You'll learn the benefits of establishing a positive and engaged workforce, its characteristics, and concrete steps to create one. You'll also explore how to recognize the signs and impacts of negativity, and how to take corrective action if necessary to engage employees.

The best leaders have a clear picture of their organizations' people and systems, and what drives them in their chosen career. Effective leaders are also aware of each employee's career plan, their motivations, how they interact with one another, as well as the power dynamics between staff members. In this course, you'll learn about organizational awareness and how it relates to career management. You'll also explore how you can develop organizational awareness when managing your career to advance your professional goals.

It's not only the Finance department that needs to understand budgeting and finance essentials. Given the importance of finance for non-finance professionals, it's in everyone's best interest to have some basic knowledge of one of the most important aspects of business finance - budgeting. In this course, you'll learn to identify the characteristics of an effective budget, the stages in planning one, and how to distinguish between budgets types. You'll also explore budgeting concepts and techniques such as historical and zero-based budgeting, variance analysis, capital budgeting, and performing budgeting calculations.

To maintain your company's finances, you need a strong knowledge of business finance. And to improve the financial well-being of your company, it's vital to understand key financial statements, such as the Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Balance Sheet, as these will hint at problems and possible solutions. This course will give you an overview of these three statements. You'll also explore typical examples of financial statements, learn how each financial statement relates to the other, and discover what each one indicates about your company's financial position.

Financial analysis helps you understand your organization's business finance, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. This course explains finance for non-finance professional in easy-to-understand language, with a specific focus on financial statements. You'll learn about methods for analyzing financial statements from the perspective of a non-financial professional. You'll explore the concept of the Time Value of Money. You'll also examine how to use common financial ratios for profitability, efficiency, liquidity, and solvency, and study percentage calculations. Finally, you'll be introduced to vertical and horizontal analysis.

Discover how to create, save, and open documents in Word 2019 in this 16-video course. Learners will observe how to use the Start page interface with its simple layout, giving you access to old and new documents, and how to optimize documents with accessibility and protection tools. You will learn how to change what gets displayed on the Start page through the various options offered by Word 2019. Key topics covered here include how to change a document's orientation from portrait to landscape; how to adjust margins, the blank areas around the contents of a document; and how to change a page size in Word when printing documents other than A4. Next, you will observe how Word allows you to insert information automatically using data fields with Quick Parts. For instance, you can insert a document character or word count, filename or size, and much more-data pulled automatically from properties and added to the text. Learn how to check out a document if you want to make edits without other people making changes. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Word 2019 for Windows: Creating, Opening & Saving Documents Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

In this 17-video course, learners will explore Word's primary function: adding text to a document. Typing, manipulating, and double-checking your text for accuracy is made easy with World 2019's intuitive text tools. Learn how to choose where to insert text, then navigate or remove that text with the keyboard. Learners will observe how to use special characters, advanced AutoCorrect tools, and predefined AutoText items to build out a document quickly. Key topics covered here include how to move and reposition text paragraphs manually; other ways to move words, lines, and paragraphs; and the helpful use of keyboard shortcuts; and practical uses of the undo function, which allows replacement of deleted pictures, paragraphs, and headings with the originals if you change your mind. Learn how to save various versions of a document so that you can choose which version to keep. Continue by observing how to configure your Spell Check feature, by choosing words to add to your dictionary, manage your dictionary settings, and confirming that the set language matches the language you are typing in. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Word 2019 for Windows: Editing Documents Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

Keep track of events, meetings, and appointments in Outlook for Office 2019 by using the calendar function. In this 15-video course, learners will discover how to configure a calendar; create and organize events and meetings; add, import, and export calendars; and work with tasks. Begin with an overview of the calendar, and then learn how to create a one-off or recurring event. Outlook's meeting function allows you to propose and schedule a meeting, while at the same time send e-mail invitations to your intended participants. Discover how to do this along with managing your meetings. You will explore how to create events from your e-mail; create a calendar, and import and export a calendar. Also, observe how to manage multiple calendars; print a calendar and save as a PDF, and configure your calendar. Discover how to create a task with Outlook's To-Do List function; assign a task; and then organize your tasks. Finally, observe how to customize tasks.

To be productive, you need to keep your Outlook 2019 e-mails organized. Explore how to use folders, search for e-mail, and handle junk e-mail in this 10-video course. Begin by learning how to delete messages, which will free up space in your e-mail inbox. Then discover how to manage and clean up conversations from the mailbox cleanup setting menu in Outlook; organize your e-mails into folders; use Outlook's Favorites list to create favorite folders; and create search folders, sometimes known as virtual folders, to automatically find and organize your e-mails. Learn how to use the search tool to search for e-mails in your inbox, and then configure your search options. Explore how to combat junk mail by configuring Outlook to prevent it from arriving in your inbox, and how to mark unwanted e-mails by creating rules to automatically identify and remove them from your inbox. Conclude by exploring how to archive e-mails.

Create a new spreadsheet and workbook, with Excel 2019. During this course, you will begin by learning how to create and open a document, and then learn how to use document templates. This leads into how to manage worksheets, which are used in Excel to manage different sets of data within a workbook. Next, observe how to save your worksheet or workbook as an Excel version or pdf; and recover unsaved documents. Learn how to insert headers and footers, useful if you have additional information to insert into a spreadsheet. Examine how to set your print area; adjust your print page layout, and then print your document. Discover how to check for compatibility issues; edit your document properties; and check for personal information in your document. The course concludes by showing how to create an accessible document, and how to protect your document or restrict all access with a password. In order to practice what you have learned, you will find the Word document named Excel 2019 for Windows: Creating & Saving Workbooks Exercise as well as the associated materials in the Resources section.

The relationship between you and your boss is a key factor in your career. Careful relationship management will make your job more enjoyable. You'll find that to work more effectively with your boss, you need to develop a rapport and good networking skills. Managing up can help you find enjoyment and reward in your current position. In this course, you'll learn the importance of managing relationships, and ways to build great boss relationships by recognizing their agenda and management style. You'll also learn strategies for building a strong professional relationship with your boss, and about various ways you can become aligned with your boss.

Working for a difficult boss can be challenging. In this course, you will learn about the management styles, communication styles, and personality types of difficult bosses. You will also learn strategies for working with a difficult boss and what to do if a boss becomes abusive.

Does your job require you to communicate critical information to c-suite executives, such as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)? Perhaps you have opportunities to influence executive decision making, but don't know how best to deliver your message. In order to make the most of your communication with senior executives, you need to be prepared. In this course, you'll learn how to shape your message so it's communicated clearly to your organization's c suite. You'll discover how to build your credibility with those at the senior level, such as the CFO, CIO, and COO. And you'll explore how to approach and plan meetings with senior executives, and how to make your case - whether it's with an elevator pitch or a formal report.

Getting things done in the business world requires more than simply issuing orders. And most of us don't have the titles or authority to issue them in the first place. Along with being credible and building trust, you get results without direct authority by using persuasion and influence. Effective persuasion methods and influencing skills are the difference makers for getting results, with or without positional authority. This course will help you engage and enlist others in getting things done without the resort of formal power. It explores persuasion techniques and ways to promote influence through effective communication, reciprocity, the exchange of professional 'currencies', and persevering through resistance.