Brief Narrative of the Company
Secretaries or administrative assistants play pivotal roles in every organization. Such roles include doing clerical works together with administrative functions (Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2012). This paper does not focus on all industries. Rather, the focus is on the construction industry, with the particular organization that is utilized for discussions of the paper being Turner Construction Company.
Turner Construction Company is located in North Carolina. It started building in 1920s. The company’s first successful project was a concrete-frame textile mill in Gastonia in North Carolina. Since then, the company has increased its range of projects. The heart of the operation of Turner Construction Company rests on platforms of innovation and creativity as the main strategies for gaining competitive advantage.
This strategy has seen the company grow into an international organization. To keep in pace with this growth, an opportunity for a secretarial position has emerged within the human resource department. A candidate qualifying for this position will be based in North Carolina office that is located at Charlotte in Raleigh.
Responsibilities
The human resource secretary (administrative assistant) will conduct office duties involving file maintenance tasks from the organization of the company’s files, for instance payroll files, invoices for suppliers, summary for billing the organization’s projects, and invoices for contracts to suppliers and blueprints.
The office of HR handles a large number of information that is related to employees’ documentations including bookkeeping of accounts payable to the employees coupled with billing.
Being an administrative assistant, the secretary is anticipated to help in these roles through conducting chores such as reviewing invoices, clarification for accuracy in calculations of material costs, and costs of subcontracting (Christensen & Media, 2013). The sectary also reviews timecards for employees besides appraising and updating expense reports coupled with payrolls.
For successful performance in his or her range of chores, the secretary will also have to conduct extra duties such as using software applications to ensure that the costs related to employees are both tracked and maintained up to date for every project that is manned by the employees of the company within North Carolina.
The secretary will also help the HR to update information that is required to construct proposals together with budgetary reports.
Knowledge of software applications applicable in the HR department is also a very crucial requirement for the human resource secretary since the successful candidate will use the application programs to keep up to date by tracking the cost of the materials used in building and execution of Turner Construction Company projects.
Qualifications
The candidate should:
- Be experienced in letter drafting.
- Possess skills in administration of various tasks such as management of payrolls and supplier invoices.
- Be capable to work in standalone environments and in a professional manner.
- Be able to produce timely supplies reports when needed.
- Be able to work with information secretly and in a private manner.
- Have skills in time management to him or her know the priorities for effective work.
- Be accurate in document typing.
- Be highly knowledgeable in computer applications applicable in HR department.
- Possess a degree in business administration and a one year experience in handling of construction related secretarial duties.
- Possess incredible interpersonal and intrapersonal communication skills, as he or she will handle employees directly in the extents of documentation of their pleas before they are forwarded to the HR.
Compensation and Benefits Package
In every new job opening, compensation and benefits package offered constitute the starting point for recruitment of the most qualified person to fill the position. Employee compensation and benefits package comprises a myriad of facets such as variable pay, compensation based on equities, guaranteed pay, and benefits (Lambert & Vicki, 2012, p.307).
A guaranteed pay involves all monies that are accorded to an employee in terms of wages or monthly salaries. For the proposed secretarial position, the guaranteed pay is the basic salary that is arrived at from the minimum statutory pay set in the state of North Carolina as prescribed by the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
This salary is $30,830 (Christensen & Media, 2013, Para. 4). Indeed, with regard to these authors, secretaries in construction companies are paid the same amount of wages as in other industries.
In addition to the basic salary, the secretary will also be eligible to a variable pay package. Variable pay includes bonuses, commissions paid from sales, and money paid for overtime jobs done offered to employees due to jobs well done and good results achieved (Lambert & Vicki, 2012). In the case of the Turner Construction Company, secretarial position variable pay will comprise bonuses and overtime allowances.
The criteria used for overtime pay is based on extra hours worked per week. For every hour above 40 hours worked in a week, the secretary will be eligible to an hourly pay of 1.5 times more than normal hourly pay. This calculation formula is based on the BLS standards. Bonuses added to the salary of the secretariat includes the discretionally bonuses (Brockbank, 2003).
Other forms of gifts and payments given to an employee on a special occasion are bonuses given even in employees’ absence, for example if the employee is on holiday or is ill. The job position will entail working in odd hours especially in times when there are urgent meetings (United States Department of Labor, 2012).
For this reason, the eligible person will not be limited to work for a specific amount of hours. The bottom line is that any candidate applying for this position should be ready to work in unusual hours as long as she or he is compensated for the extra time worked.
Reference List
Brockbank, W. (2003). If HR Were Really Strategically Proactive: Present and Future Directions in HR’s Contribution to Competitive Advantage. Human resource management, 38(4), 337-352.
Bureau of Labor and Statistics. (2012). Occupational Employment and Wages. Web.
Christensen, M., & Media, D. (2013). Job Description for a Construction Company. Web.
Lambert, C., & Vicki, M. (2012). The Top Three FLSA Violations and How to Avoid Them. Journal of Human Resource Management, 12(3), 306-313.
United States Department of Labor. (2012). Summary of the Major Laws of the Department Of Labor. Web.