Work as an Executive Assistant

I work as an Executive Assistant in Satakunta Wellbeing Services County in the Department of Senior Services (at the moment I am on maternity leave). My main tasks before maternity leave consist of administrative tasks. I was responsible for the preparation of decisions for the Director of Senior Services. I was also chosen as the Recording Secretary of the Elderly Services Committee and had tasks coordinating their meetings and taking official notes. My main tasks also include various administrative tasks such as gathering information, taking notes in meetings, checking bills, preparing material for the Director of Senior Services and, of course, a bit of customer service. One of my major tasks from previous work was to be the Responsible Super User of the Social Welfare Client Information System in KESSOTE area. This task has ended since the new Social Welfare Client Information System was deployed last year.

Digital and Social Media Tools at workplace

As for digital tools, my best friends are Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft applications like Outlook, Word and Excel. I used them daily. I also often used applications like Dynasty, where you can prepare all the official decisions by public officials and meeting documents for the Elderly Services Committee. I also used Visma M2 for preparing travel expenses claims for the temporary substitutes.

For example, social media tools are quite rare in my work tasks and actually I haven’t used quite many Social Media tools in my work. One Social Media tool I could think about is WhatsApp. We started to use WhatsApp more at the workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic period, it was an easy and quick way to communicate with coworkers. It is more convenient than text-message and you can send messages also via desktop application. Also, pictures, videos and other documents are easy to share.

The Positive and Negative Sides of Social Media

Nowadays social media has a big part in our work and personal life. It makes some things simpler, for example making video calls via WhatsApp or Skype. The call is much more personal when you can see the other side. It is also easy to stay in touch with friends and family living further away from you. It is easy to share pictures, videos, or life-changing moments with others. Social media also has an important role to play in professional networking. Digital tools like LinkedIn can help you with job searching, recruitment, or career development. It kind of is a new way of career progression in addition to traditional way.

The first negative thing in my mind is that social media is time consuming. It is simple to scroll videos and pictures for several minutes or even hours. It is necessary and important to limit the use of them. Of course, I realize that there are thousands of people who make a living from it. One of the negative sides or threats is also cybercrime or catfishing, people are pretending to be someone else. Therefore, you should be very careful sharing information about you or about your work on social media.

ChatGPT

Although there are many useful Social Media tools, I decided to start with the first and the most well-known and that is ChatGPT. In my previous posts I have mentioned that I haven’t used ChatGPT in my workplace, but I am quite sure I will use it once I return to work. It would be a great help in several ways like draw up agendas and meeting minutes. It would help especially with meeting minutes, because ChatGPT would help to summarize the most important points of the meeting. I would also use it to quickly generate standard texts for the official decisions by public officials. You still have to double-check the texts, because it is easy to make mistakes when you haven’t written the texts yourself. One of my biggest weaknesses is that I am quite bad at summarizing long texts and saying the basics in a few words. I like to explain and use many words, I could say I am quite verbose. So, ChatGPT would be a wonderful help to sum it all up. Although ChatGPT is like an advanced Google to my mind, it still isn’t bulletproof, so you have to be careful using the information you get from it.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become more and more popular amongst people. It helps create contacts, some people also find jobs through it, perfect place for headhunters or just to share your thoughts about a certain subject. Usually, people share information on LinkedIn about their new job and/or role or successful project or new milestone in education. Well, there are many different ways to share information or thoughts about current news.

The first thought about using LinkedIn in my work is to connect to other Executive Assistants in the same organization or in the other counties. Sharing thoughts, arranging meetings, asking questions about their work or what they think about a certain subject – it would be quite interesting to network with other people working in the same field.

It also gives the possibility to publish milestones in your career, for example a project ended and these are the results. You have also the opportunity to ask for feedback if you have some kind of issue. I guess LinkedIn has changed a lot in the past years. It used to be only career-oriented, but nowadays people tend to also post bits and pieces about their own life.

And as for the future, LinkedIn would be a nice way to find out what’s more available somewhere else. Profile information is an easy way to show others what kind of work experience you have or where and what have you studied. It also gives you the opportunity to tell what kind of hobbies you have or whether you do any voluntary work. It basically is an online CV available for all the recruiters.

YouTube

The third choice was YouTube. I guess we already have a self-learning platform, but I would use also YouTube. It already has all kinds of tutorials for different problems. I would do more administrative tasks concerning a channel for secretaries and assistants. For example, all new programs/applications and features could have their own tutorial videos. Easy and fast way to learn using different programs, forms, regulations and so on.

I also liked the idea from Pirkanmaa Welfare Services County, who has filmed different topics and current affairs programs. I am quite sure that we could make similar videos about our services for seniors. There could be also a monthly program, where different people talk about the decisions made in County Council and County Executive Board concerning senior services.

Evernote

I haven’t heard about Evernote before, but the first look of it seems wonderful. Being an Executive Assistant means that you have several tasks to do at the same time. They often are urgent and have some kind of deadline. At the same time, you have reports and meeting notes etc. to publish, so you have to be smart and organize your tasks in the easiest and simplest way.

Evernote has a task list and planner, which are a must in my work. I like to have the tasks in front of me, so I am aware of everything that is going on. Evernote has the possibility to store meeting notes, tasks and other documents all in one place. It also helps to track all the unfinished tasks. It has a searching tool, so it is so much easier to find something missing versus searching the documents or subjects from emails. Basically, it is a mastermind in managing everything what is going on, so the tasks and documents are all in the same place. I am definitely going to try this out when I go back to work.

Todoist

As I mentioned before, I like to have my to-do lists and cross off those tasks that I have already done. Although Evernote surprised me with all the features, I am also very interested in Todoist. The users have mentioned that it is the best to-do-list application. It is simple and efficient, so it is easy to use. Todoist works across multiple platforms like desktop, web, and mobile—which means your tasks sync in real time on your devices. It also integrates with tools like Google Calendar, Outlook and Gmail. For example, you can use Todoist to plan a vacation or manage weekly groceries and share it with other family members. It can be used in private life and in the workplace, so it is a multifunctional digital tool.

Elements of the Successful Use of a Digital Application

Working in the social and healthcare sector, I have always thought about digital applications as an alternative option to available services. Although I prefer digital services myself, to my mind every patient or customer should be allowed to choose the right kind of service for him or her. Applications should be user-friendly despite which level of digital skills a person has. For example, a complex application does not inspire nor do elderly people or people with basic knowledge to use it. A user manual or videos about using a digital application would be a huge plus as well.
In digital applications a major factor is the security of an application. No-one wants to find out that his or her data is available for cyber criminals.

Self-evaluation

This assignment inspired me to look into different social media tools and to think about how I could use them in my work and therefore improve my performance. At first, I thought that social media is basically communicating with others, but I soon found out that the tools are also here to support my work. Although I haven’t been using many Social Media tools at work yet, I hope to have the opportunity to try a few out. I am a bit worried if they are allowed in our workplace because of the cyber risks. In social care and healthcare, obligation of confidentiality is a major thing. The employer has a major role in saying which applications are safe and allowed to use. So, I am a bit worried that some kind of documents are prohibited from being used, for example in Evernote. But using Todoist along with ChatGPT will be on my try out list.