What makes an exemplary company secretary?
What makes an exemplary company secretary?
Are you wondering how to become an exemplary company secretary? Being a professional company secretary in the modern-day takes a lot of skills, understanding, and tools to complete those tasks. As the ‘go to person’ who minutes the meetings, sets up the meetings and maintains all kinds of documentation. This documentation needs to be updated on a regular basis and securely maintained.
All these things are things that you need to fine-tune and understand just what works best for you. Your organisation may have its own governing rules on how certain things are done or how documents and information is stored. But there is a level of personal preference as well. However, if you don’t know of all the options available and really don’t understand all the functions a company secretary should manage, then you cannot perform your job optimally.
Being organised is vital to be an exemplary governance professional
Knowing how to store the information and how to use this information properly is important as well. Think about it, if you have less unimportant documentation to wade through, your life will be more organised and better. But, determining what is important and what is not can be a bit tricky as you produce and maintain so much information and documentation. Everyone expects you to know everything or know who to contact in order to gain access to important data quickly.
That is why it is important to go to classes and learn everything there is to know about being the best company secretary. These are skills that not only are great for your job but can carry over into your personal life as well. Knowing what information to keep and store and what to discard is important.
This will allow you to be able to put the information that you need in the hands of the proper person quickly and with ease. Finding documents and information quickly is vital for a company secretary it doesn’t matter whether it is in hard or soft copy, you are expected to put your hands on the data quickly.
Duties of a company secretary
There are legal documents and governing documents that also need to be maintained by the board or company secretary. You are also expected to take professional meeting minutes and have outstanding communication skills. All of these skills can be fine-tuned while taking the proper company secretary courses.
Learning how to better organise yourself and your company will help you be better at your job. Think about it, you are not learning the newest and latest skills by always doing what you have always done. The world is an ever-changing place and you need to ensure your skills are keeping up with the times.
Security is becoming a huge issue within companies. Documentation is now stored electronically, and breach of confidentiality and data privacy are worries. The digital world has entered all organisations. Security has become a huge concern, think of the likes of Facebook who had recent issues with data breaches. Even down to sending and receiving emails. Phishing emails and trojan software or malware are all vulnerabilities that organisations need to guard against.
Ensuring you don’t have a security leak or issue is important. And, how you store your documents is another concern that needs to be addressed as well. We are living in a new era where technology is much more advanced than that of the past.
Corporate Governance implementer and ‘one view of the truth’. Are you a bold ambassador for good governance?
As company secretary, everyone within your organisation is looking to you for impartial guidance on all governance matters. People come to you for information and advice on procedural matter. They want advice on governance matters or board paper submissions. You are the main adviser on your delegations of authority. Board secretaries are supposed to be independent and usually report directly into the Chairman and the board of directors.
When company secretaries are independent and empowered by board they are safe to give objective advice and push back when management are acting outside of their powers or mandate. As the independent advisors to the board and senior management team, a company secretary gives the ‘one view of the truth’, which is objective and in the best interests of the organisation.
Entity management technology – company secretaries working smarter not harder
Many companies are now using entity management software to store company registers, names of directors and shareholders and to store important documents. Board secretaries and their company secretariat teams manage their global entities through specialist software to ensure records are up to date and easily accessible to the right people at a click of a button.
Whether you are called board secretary, company secretary or corporate secretary you are still tasked to ensure that the legal and statutory aspects of your group are correct and updated. This is made easier by either using company secretarial software or by outsourcing the maintenance of your company statutory books. By outsourcing these updates to a company secretary outsource specialist for risk management you can make your life hassle free. Some companies choose to outsource part of their company secretarial tasks, namely, attending board or committee meetings, drafting agendas and board minutes through company secretarial specialists.
Board portals and electronic meeting packs – quick and secure access to data for directors and the company secretary
Are you wondering what makes an exemplary company secretary? As technology has advanced, many directors and company secretaries use board portals to circulate board and committee meeting packs. These portals allow directors to access meeting papers confidentially through their iPad, laptop or even a smart phone. Now board secretaries can easily prepare agendas, meeting packs and circulate meeting papers electronically. This enables meeting packs and board papers to be sent to directors securely for download and review before critical board and committee meetings.
For added security directors’ access confidential and important information through multi-factor authentication to read their board packs. There is no longer the need to print out multiple meeting packs as they can now be sent electrically and securely at a click of a button. It also means that if a director loses their electronic device or forgets their password the company secretary can wipe the data remotely or reset the director’s password.
Advanced technology and how it helps – What makes an exemplary company secretary?
With this new technology, there is a need for new skills. And, also a need for a better understanding of the technology as well. If you are looking to advance in your career as a company secretary, you need to understand just what is expected of you. You need to have the knowledge and understanding of where to go to should you not know the technology.
There are programs out there that can make your secretarial life much easier. However, you are not going to learn them by sitting at the same desk you have always sat at. You need to get professional training on what is out there and what is coming in the future.
Getting the professional company secretary training that you need will help you be better at what you do. It will also make you more valuable to the company. All of this is important when it comes to your career. So, don’t hesitate to improve your secretarial skills with the help of a professional company secretary training.
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