Nationwide award honours the UK’s most versatile office professionals

Branding, credit control, event management, training, publishing - this is just a small selection of the skills being embraced by the winners of the Office Professional of Tomorrow Award 2004 - a joint initiative between specialised recruiter OfficeTeam and the Institute of Qualified Professional Secretaries (IQPS).

The award revealed that office professionals are now absorbing a significant number of specialist skills into their role, which is resulting in a substantial increase in the tangible value they add to British business.

The variety of the specialist skills demonstrated in the nomination forms surprised even the organisers of the award. Steve Carter, managing director for OfficeTeam stated: We knew through our research that the role of the office professional was developing beyond dictation and shorthand, but the nominations we received demonstrate in black and white the true extent that office professionals are being called upon to support a huge variety of business functions.

Carter continued: Given the increasing amount of responsibility and accountability that office professionals have to business, we believe they need greater recognition within industry if they are to continue developing their role. Our selected winner, for example, is testament to the value that office professionals can add, increasing her organisation’s web sales by 100% in one month alone.

Andrea McKinney Creative Director of Deskdemon.com and one of the judges, concluded: We received hundreds of enquiries about the OfficeTeam award, demonstrating that office professionals feel it is about time that they were recognised for the significant contribution they make to business. The winning nomination was tough to judge, and as a result we have selected one outright winner, plus two special commendations.

The overall winner came from Manchester City Football Club, whilst the two special commendations are from Basingstoke and Glasgow.