3 Most Common Types Of Secretaries In The Business World
Secretaries play a crucial role in typical business settings. Aside from performing administrative duties, such as handling correspondence and managing databases, secretaries help keep the organisation or company organised and compliant with business requirements and regulations.
However, although most business secretaries perform the same clerical functions, they can still differ in terms of the nature of their tasks and their specialisation. Some secretaries may specialise in a specific area and have unique responsibilities. Read on to discover three of the most common classifications of secretaries in the business world.
1. Company secretary
A company secretary is often considered a high-level company officer requiring specific qualifications to be qualified. They are typically appointed in accordance with the rules set out in the Companies Act. Primarily, company secretaries are responsible for keeping an eye on the secretarial works and maintaining liaison with the other employees, shareholders, board of directors, and other outside parties.
Company secretaries are often hired internally. However, there are also business owners who prefer to outsource company secretary services instead. Nonetheless, regardless of the nature of their employment, company secretaries perform practically the same tasks, including the maintenance of books and registers, issuance of share certifications, drafting of minutes, arrangement of board meetings, and more.
2. Private secretary
A private secretary is similar to a company secretary, except that the former is usually only employed by an individual instead of an entire organisation. Private secretaries are essentially employed to perform personal work for their employers. These employers may be high officials of any organisation or company or important individuals of the society, such as businesspersons, doctors, lawyers, politicians, and the like.
Generally, private secretaries are hired as their assistance and skills are needed by their employers in performing routine functions. The usual responsibilities of a private secretary include maintaining and filing important documents, conducting correspondences, setting and recording appointments, handling phone calls and enquiries, attending to guests or clients, and more.
3. Virtual assistant
As the world becomes increasingly digitised, businesses occupy the digital space to conduct most of their day-to-day operations. This paves the way for the roles of secretaries to evolve. With the rapid growth of remote work arrangements, virtual assistance is becoming more and more in demand.
Virtual assistants are business secretaries who work from home or somewhere other than a conventional office. They heavily depend on technology since most of their tasks are done by telephone, fax, and computer. Most of the time, virtual assistants are freelancers whose specific areas of expertise vary. Some serve as personal assistants to their employers, performing clerical duties and scheduling engagements, while others carry out specialised functions like finance and bookkeeping.
Conclusion
The types of secretaries are seemingly endless; aside from the ones mentioned in this article, there are also financial secretaries, legal secretaries, secretaries of government bodies, medical secretaries, and more. Although these secretaries may differ in their designation and the concentration of their work, they nonetheless play the same key role in general: performing basic administrative duties to ensure the smooth flow of business.
If your business is in need of reliable and efficient company secretary services to make its day-to-day operations more streamlined, OneStop Professional Services is the firm that can help! We are a trusted audit and accounting firm in Singapore that offers a wide range of valuable and inexpensive corporate services, spanning from secretarial to accounting services and provision of nominee directors in Singapore. To learn more about our cost-effective services, feel free to contact us anytime.
