Administrative Supervisors are organized multi-taskers and apt communicators with strong decision making abilities. They play an important management role, and in order to be successful they must be capable of prioritizing duties and exhibiting leadership skills, which includes a capacity for educating employees as well as an ability to be assertive supervisors.
Duties
Below are core duties and responsibilities.
Hire Administrative Staff
The Administrative Supervisor participates in the hiring process of administrative staff. They notify hiring department when additional staff members are needed and sometimes perform interviews and lead the review process. They make recommendations regarding all departmental personnel decisions including the hiring, promotion and firing of administrative staff members.
Train Administrative Staff
Providing guidance and coaching, the Administrative Supervisor trains all new incoming staff as well as provides any necessary additional training to current staff. These duties include processing new hire paperwork, orientation, and developing training programs that effectively implement all company policies and procedures.
Manage Administrative Staff
As the direct supervisor for administrative and support staff, the Administrative Supervisor is responsible for assigning job duties to individual staff members and prioritizing workloads. They are also responsible for processing payroll for all of their employees. They ensure that tasks are completed in an effective and timely manner.
Evaluate Administrative Staff Performance
In order to ensure their team’s ongoing success, the Administrative Supervisor must continually evaluate their staff members and provide feedback for improvement. They are also responsible for identifying areas of weakness, departmental inefficiencies and providing appropriate recommendations for resolving these issues. They ensure employees act in accordance with company policies and implement disciplinary action when necessary.
Perform Administrative Tasks
Administrative Supervisors also assist with administrative tasks as needed. This can include managing calendars, responding to email and phone messages, assisting with customer requests and questions, coordinating meetings, compiling meeting materials and documents, creating presentations, booking travel and providing executive staff with support as needed.
Experience Necessary and Training
Most supervisors have previous experience as a customer service agent, while some have previous computer reservation systems certificate training through a trade school or travel academy. All airlines, however, train extensively any customer service agents they hire on the airline’s specific computer reservation system before activating the agent to operational duty. So if a supervisor is hired externally and not promoted from within, he is required to attend and complete the initial customer service agent training at the airline’s training station at the company’s expense.
Advancement Potential
Airlines first look to promote customer service supervisors from within in order to minimize training expense and to have a solid idea of a supervisory candidate’s work ethic, record and ability. A supervisor can move laterally to accept special assignments such as teaching training classes, opening new station operations or qualifying existing agents on new reservation system implementations. They also will be the first pool of employees looked to when seeking a candidate to promote to manager of customer service operations at a station or to take over a regional or headquartered customer service administration post system-wide.