New Year, 1% New Me
Your weekly round up of what's going on in the Admin world
Hello and Happy New Year!
It’s great to be back - I hope you all had a lovely time over Christmas and New Year and are raring to go in 2025!
This week’s Admin Wrap leans into new things for 2025 - goals, process improvements, etc. There’s been a lot of noise on social media about this 75 Hard plan where you pledge to do all these new things for 75 days. If that’s for you, great. Personally, I much prefer the 1% rule - pick something to make 1% better. Eat 1% fewer chocolates; work through an extra 1% of your emails; walk 1% further. If it was good enough for the British Cycling team to win a load of Olympic medals a few years ago, then it’s good enough for me!
Let’s get this year off to a smashing start 🙌
Yvette
NewsWrap
With the New Year firmly upon us, it’s the perfect time to evaluate, reset and refocus so that you achieve what you want to this year. Candice Burningham has teamed up with Savoya to offer some great tips and advice on how to get the foundations right to succeed this year.
Calling senior level EAs! Those of you at the absolute top of your game, looking to learn from and collaborate with other elite EAs, this is for you. Ascend Eight is launching very soon, and we are looking for people to sign up to get notified when it’s ready. You can find out all the information here, including the criteria to apply once we open the doors
The weather has turned here in the UK, with most of us being covered in a blanket of snow in the last week. Working from home just got a lot chillier - unless you have one of these awesome electric foot warmers!! Match it with the warming mouse pad we shared late last year, and you're all cosied up! 🥰
Caring for children (or others) over holidays can be a real challenge. Perhaps Christmas isn’t so bad because many of us are all off at the same time, or at least working from home. However, some of the other school holidays can prove to be challenging when it comes to managing your caring responsibilities. Glassdoor have a helpful article which could help - with one of the key pieces of advice being to plan well in advance
February is Black History Month, and whilst Black History shouldn’t be reduced to just one month of the year, it’s important to recognise it and raise awareness. HiBob have loads of ways you can celebrate the diversity in your workplace. If any of you have any other advice or guidance, please do share it and I’ll include them in next week’s Admin Wrap
There was a rather important announcement from Lucy Brazier this week over on LinkedIn. For those of you who use the Global Skills Matrix to benchmark yourself, she’s made some - in my opinion - really insightful comments about it and how part of it might be being used in a way not intended. I’d really encourage you to take a read if you’ve not seen it already.
With a New Year comes new plans, and some of those plans might involve streamlining your work, or improving your processes. Monday.com have written a list of the best Business Process Management software. Not really surprising that they’ve put themselves at the top of the list, but the others they suggest are also pretty decent. If your company doesn’t allow you to implement new software, take a look at the second half of the article, which gives some additional advice on how and what to map.
Looking for a Mentor?
I’ve teamed up with three fabulous mentors to offer mentorship across a range of specialities. You can book in for an hour, or a block of three hours, to get expert advice and guidance from one of four women who all have vastly different backgrounds and experiences. Take a look here
By referring your friends and colleagues to The Admin Wrap, you can earn yourself free access to The Extra Wrap - our in depth thought leadership pieces which are sent out every Monday. Can you make it to the top of the leader board?
💻 TechWrap
Each month we’re going to be deep diving into a software platform or piece of tech that you might use, and we’ll give you a Top Tip each week for it.
For January, we’re going to be looking at Salesforce. I know this is a beast of a system, so at the end of Jan, I’ll be sharing a link to the guide I use the most when I have a Salesforce question.
If you are the admin for your Salesforce instance, I’d highly recommend restricting who can create reports. If everyone can, you’ll end up with quite literally thousands of reports and it will take an army to sort them out (trust me - I’ve been there!) Limit the number of people who can create them to just a select few.
EventWrap
The Strategic PA Network are hosting an online event on Friday 17th Jan at 12.30pm UK time on Emotional Resilience for EAs. Sign up for your ticket here
The EA Campus are hosting another awesome online event on 31st Jan - DEVELOP: EA Campus Virtual Summit. There’s a fantastic line up of speakers, and (spoiler alert) you might even spot an appearance from yours truly! So get your ticket here
Creating new habits at the start of the year is super common. But how many of us drop them after a few days or weeks? 🙋♀️ EA How To are hosting an online webinar on 21st Jan on How to Build Healthy Habits, alongside Sharon Gleeson. You can sign up free here
The next Tech Hack from The Officials is taking place on 16th Jan at 5pm UK time. This one is focusing on NotebookLM - so if you use that in your organisation, this session is not to be missed. You can get all the details here
If you are running an event aimed at administrative professionals, please send me an email and let me know all about it - hello@theadminwrap.com