Administrative Professionals Day 2027 is on Wednesday

About Administrative Professionals Day

The day recognizes people whose work holds an office together: scheduling, records, correspondence, budgets, travel, event planning and the many small problems that never reach a manager's desk. Employers and colleagues use it to say thank you, and the professional association behind it also uses the week to promote training and career development for administrative staff.

According to the history published by the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP), the idea came from Mary Barrett, president of the National Secretaries Association, and C. King Woodbridge, president of the Dictaphone Corporation, who sat on a council looking at a national shortage of skilled office workers. With Harry Klemfuss, a public relations executive at Young & Rubicam, they proposed a week to honor secretaries and draw people into the career. US Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer proclaimed the first National Secretaries Week for June 1 to 7, 1952, with Wednesday, June 4 as National Secretaries Day.

In 1955 the observance moved to the last full week of April, where it has stayed, with the Wednesday as the main day. The name changed to Professional Secretaries Week in 1981 and to Administrative Professionals Week in 2000, reflecting the wider range of job titles in office support. The National Secretaries Association itself became Professional Secretaries International in 1981 and the IAAP in 1998.

The day is not a public holiday. It is widely kept in the United States and also marked in some other countries, sometimes on different dates.

Sources: International Association of Administrative Professionals: Administrative Professionals Week history (archived 2010), International Association of Administrative Professionals. How we check dates.

How to mark Administrative Professionals Day

• Thank the administrative staff you work with in writing, naming specific tasks they handled well this year.
• Ask an assistant or office manager which training course or certification they would like, and help fund it.
• Cover a routine task yourself for the day, such as booking your own travel or ordering supplies.
• Invite administrative colleagues to a team lunch planned and organized by someone else for once.
• Review whether job titles, pay and workloads for support roles still match the work being done.

Administrative Professionals Day dates