Who Benefits From Your Learning?
Your weekly round up of what's going on in the Admin world
Hello and welcome to this week’s Admin Wrap. If it’s your first time here, hello 👋 I’m Yvette and I write this newsletter every week to share some of the interesting things I’ve been reading about.
This week it’s been about writing company policies (yay), understanding who actually benefits when you take a training course, and why lift/elevator usage is increasing in London but not elsewhere in Europe.
I’ve also got a critical poll a little further down where I’m really interested in your thoughts.
This week’s Reality Wrap is about AI and I’ve got an incredible prompt you can copy and paste into your AI tool and it will help you learn how to use it. An ideal first step if you’re still a little unsure about how to make the most out of AI and you’re generally a little nervous about it.
Let’s jump in!
Yvette
NewsWrap
We often get asked to write or review Travel & Entertainment (T&E - some companies call them Travel & Expense) policies and unless we’ve read loads and know what good looks like, it’s a pretty tough ask. Of course, we can ask AI (like with everything else) but AI wouldn’t be able to tell you what things should be included specifically for your company and your employees. You might have specific hotel rates in certain cities that people must use, or you might give people special dispensation to book with a certain airline when traveling to a specific destination. AI can make it generic for you, but you need to make it relevant. This article shows you a bunch of policies from companies you may well have heard of - to see how it’s done and help give you some inspiration or guidance
We are all doing more training, and we are doing it by the bucketload - which can only be a great thing. But for whom is it great? Your employer gets a better-trained employee (presumably for the same money) so they benefit from increased productivity or higher quality work (or more work). You might get more money (unlikely, if I’m honest) but realistically you might learn something to help you work quicker or more efficiently. You might get a better understanding of something that might have caused you stress or worry (pivot tables, anyone?) which can only be a good thing. So what can employers do if they are not giving you more pay? Hopefully something to make you feel valued and trusted - not simply ‘more responsibility’ but different responsibility.
We’ve all had that interview question - give an example of when you’ve had to deal with difficult colleagues. Your answer will of course vary based on personal experience - from colleagues who are rude, to ones who don’t follow process, to directors who argue in the middle of the office. This article from HBR, whilst aimed at executives and board members, is very relevant to EAs supporting these roles. It’s not just difficult to work with difficult managers and colleagues who are more senior than us - it’s difficult for their peers too!
Is it acceptable to drink beer at your desk? Perhaps on a Thursday or Friday, later in the afternoon might be acceptable if that’s the culture or norm in your office. But what about on your own? What if it was lunchtime? Surely not…right? What if it was a non alcoholic beer? Would it be different then? I guess it should be, but is it? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.
Some of you will know about my love of data by now, but even I would have struggled to get excited about data on lift/elevator journeys. However, it gives some interesting insights into office usage - assuming that you can realistically conclude that lift usage correlates to office usage - which wouldn’t be completely unreasonable (unless you take into account how much we all rely on Slack and Teams these days rather than speaking to other humans in person..) Interestingly, the data shows a contrast between London and other European cities, suggesting that Londoners are working in the office more often - which is interesting considering that in a conversation I had with my Dutch colleague last week, I was told that it’s normal for a lot of European countries to pay for travel to work 😳
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?
🔎 RealityWrap:
AI Won't Replace You. Your Refusal to Learn It Might.
Let’s kill the headline fear first: AI is not coming for your job. That’s a whole lot of LinkedInfluencer clickbait garbage. How do I know that? Because there are people out there who struggle with WhatsApp and Slack in the same way that our grandparents struggle with the TV remote. Giving them AI will be like making me figure out how TikTok works (no thanks!).
What is happening, right now, is that some EAs are using it to draft communications in seconds, condense a 40-page board pack into a clean briefing, build first-draft agendas, and catch scheduling conflicts before they land in anyone’s inbox. They’re doing in twenty minutes what used to take two hours.
Others are waiting to see how it plays out.
That’s the actual risk. Not a robot with your job title. It’s the EA in the next office - or the next hire at your company - making you look slow by comparison. Executives don’t audit your toolkit. They notice pace, output, and when someone is always ahead of the curve compared to that person who is perpetually catching up.
You don’t need to become a prompt engineer. You don’t need to understand what a large language model is or care about the companies building them. You need thirty minutes, a free tool, and something real from your to-do list. Give it a task. See what comes back. Push back on it. Try again.
That’s it. That’s the whole learning curve for getting started.
The tools are more accessible than the discourse around them suggests. The barrier isn’t technical - it’s the decision to actually begin.
Discomfort with new things is normal. Letting that discomfort quietly become a career liability? That’s a choice - and one that’s surprisingly easy to avoid.
Thirty minutes. This week. You can even use AI and ask it to train you! Try this prompt - let me know how you get on:
I'm an Executive Assistant and I want to learn how to use AI effectively. Before we start, ask me some questions about my role - things like who I support, what a typical day looks like, and where I spend most of my time. Once you have a feel for what I actually do, build me a personalised 20-minute walkthrough that shows me where you'd be most useful. Keep it practical, build from simple to more advanced, and explain what I should do differently to get better results as we go.
I would LOVE to hear how you get on with this prompt. I designed it in Claude but it told me it would also work in Gemini and ChatGPT. Share it around if you think it might help others.
EventWrap
Strategic PA Network are hosting their 2026 Learning & Development Summit in June at the Tylney Hall Hotel. Taking place on Monday 8th June (plus a lovely dinner on the Sunday evening if you can make it), this will be a full day of keynotes, breakout sessions and pathway-based learning. Get all the info here
School holidays impact all of us - whether we take care of children or not. We might find ourselves needing more flexibility during that time, or we might be the ones offering support to our parent colleagues. There’s a really helpful webinar taking place on 4th June to discuss business continuity during school holidays. The topics covered will be relevant for all holiday periods - not just the summer, so it’s worth checking out - get all the details here
ES Global is back for 24 hours of live learning! Wherever you are in the world, you can access top speakers and top content from just £199. Join Lucy and the team on 11-12th June - if you sign up you’ll also get 30 days of access to the replays (in case, you know, you might need to sleep at some point in those 24 hours!). Check out all the details here
For a list of Conferences, head over to the Conferences section in our Ultimate Assistant’s Toolbox.
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
The Ultimate Assistant’s Toolbox
Your complete guide to the tools that every assistant needs! And it’s FREE!
