The Global Skills Matrix – Find Your Level

Author: Helen Monument, Chair of the WA-Alliance

Editor's Note, 2024: We also highly recommend the Title Recalibration Initiative from our friend Lynn Walder, owner of Executive Management Partners and presenter at the ASAP events EA Ignite and APC.

It’s not every day that we can claim to have created that something is life-changing. But at the WA-Alliance, we believe that this global framework will impact the professional lives of thousands of administrative professionals around the world.

The Global Skills Matrix was created at the WA-Summit after a survey was done of over 3,000 Assistants from around the globe. We asked questions like “What could we do to professionalize the profession?” The results were very surprising.

First of all, there are more than 160 different job titles for what we do. No wonder the role is often misunderstood. Furthermore, a staggering 73% felt that their organizations did not understand the role or the potential impact of utilizing them properly. 60% said that they felt there was little or no opportunity for career progression within their organization. 58% of the survey respondents said that they felt underutilized, which may come as a shock to many companies.

Clearly, change and clarity were needed.

The WA-Summit Task Force took that huge amount of data, with hundreds of skills and tasks and distilled them into a manageable form, producing a Matrix that made sense and that everybody can understand. 

The Global Skills Matrix is a framework that, irrespective of country, identifies five levels of work for a given role and shows career progression opportunities to realize the potential to an organization of an effective Assistant.

The new website contains everything you need to know about this global framework. You can download the full report containing the Matrix, and the Executive Summary. 

Wherever you are in the world, you can find your own level in the Matrix, you can plan your own career path, and ask for the training that you need to fill any gaps in your skills that will prepare you for the next step.

Please join us in helping to change the lives of Assistants around the world.

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