Lucy Brazier explains what the latest research tells us about the future of the administrative profession
The first Global Skills Matrix was launched in 2021 because the profession needed language. At the time, we were still trying to explain that administrative work was more than calendar management, travel booking, and “being organised.” We were trying to create a framework that reflected the complexity, judgement, and operational responsibility already sitting inside these roles, even if most organisations had not recognised it.The 2026 edition is different. Only 13% of respondents to the 2025 Global Skills Matrix survey believed the 2021 framework still fully reflected their current role.
From 3,221 responses across 69 countries, administrative professionals described work that has shifted significantly. The original framework, which helped define the profession, needed rebuilding almost from the ground up.
In those five years, 59% report increased responsibility since 2021; 60% now routinely manage projects or programmes as part of their role; 42% are already integrating AI or automation tools into workflows; and 38% support board-level governance preparation.
This is no longer theory; it is evidence. Leadership structures, career pathways, and organisational thinking are not evolving fast enough. They are failing to recognise what is already happening operationally inside businesses every day.
This is where the data becomes uncomfortable: 51% of respondents report no clear career pathway, and 43% say their title does not accurately reflect the work they actually do. Roughly a quarter selected “Other” when asked to identify their role, because traditional titles no longer fit what they are responsible for operationally.
For years, Assistants have absorbed increasing responsibility without the organisational architecture catching up behind them. More complexity. More decision-making. More governance exposure. More operational accountability. But often without the titles, development pathways, grading structures, or recognition that normally accompany work at this level.
| What is the Global Skills Matrix? The Global Skills Matrix 2026 launched on 22 April 2026. Built on 3,221 responses from 69 countries, it is the most comprehensive examination of the global administrative profession ever undertaken. The matrix defines five progressive levels of contribution, from foundational to executive operations leadership, based on the judgement exercised, the complexity of coordination, governance exposure, and organisational impact. Progression is determined by the scope of contribution, not by job title, tenure or the seniority of the person being supported. It answers questions that no other framework has addressed. What level of work is actually being performed in these roles? Where does administrative capability sit within your organisational design? What does progression look like when it is based on contribution rather than the availability of a vacancy? For most organisations, working through those questions will reveal a significant gap between what their administrative professionals are actually doing and how those roles are currently classified and valued. The Global Skills Matrix: Professionalises and increases the role value Makes becoming an administrator a viable and structured career choice Provides a framework when changing job, locally or globally Paves the way for specific and internationally recognised credentialing It allows administrative professionals to articulate their contribution in terms of organisational impact. You can identify your level and make the case for structured progression based on evidence rather than assumption. All the resources you need are available at globalskillsmatrix.com |
In any other profession, more than half the workforce having no defined progression structure would be treated as an organisational design failure.
The Talent Pipeline
One statistic in the Global Skills Matrix survey that should concern every organisation relying heavily on experienced Assistants: fewer than 8% of respondents fall into the 25–34 age bracket. This is a long-term sustainability issue.
Too often administration has been presented externally as a service role rather than what it increasingly is operationally: a leadership coordination discipline sitting inside the execution layer of organisations.
The profession needs demonstrable pathways that make it understandable to younger Assistants deciding where to invest their careers. The Global Skills Matrix finally gives the profession language robust enough to describe that reality properly. Now the profession needs the confidence to use it.
What the Hackathon Revealed
This profession is carrying an extraordinary amount of institutional and operational knowledge. More than 80% of respondents to the Global Skills Matrix survey had over 10 years’ experience. More than half had over 20.
The profession has the expertise, but historically it has failed in transferring that knowledge to the next generation. That transfer does not happen automatically. It requires structures capable of recognising, transferring, and developing that expertise properly. It requires pathways, mentoring, and visibility.
The Hack the Future hackathon was created to address these gaps. Who better to solve the issue than the people who live with it every day? We gave participants three challenges:
- How do we reposition the profession?
- How do we attract younger generations into it?
- How do we future-proof it in the age of AI?
What struck me most was not simply the quality of the ideas, although many were exceptional. It was what happened when experienced professionals were finally given permission to think strategically about the future of their profession instead of simply reacting to change happening around them. The energy shifted immediately. People built things. When you remove that constraint, even temporarily, the level of thinking changes fast.
This Is Operational Infrastructure Now
The most important shift in the Global Skills Matrix 2026 is conceptual. The profession is no longer positioned as a support function sitting adjacent to the business; it is operational infrastructure.
At higher levels of the framework, Assistants are helping maintain operational flow, governance integrity, executive coordination, information accuracy, sequencing, prioritisation, and organisational rhythm. When that layer works well, organisations move faster and leaders make better decisions. When it breaks, the business feels it immediately. That is infrastructure – the system that allows everything else to function consistently under pressure.
And it is why the new Level 5 split matters so much.
5A recognises leaders of the administrative function itself: people designing systems, capability frameworks, standards, and operational models for entire teams or organisations. 5B recognises professionals operating as senior strategic operational partners adjacent to executive leadership.
Two different forms of leadership; two different kinds of expertise. Both valid.
The AI Divide Inside the Profession Is Real
One of the most important findings in the Global Skills Matrix is not AI adoption itself, but the unevenness of it. Some Assistants are already redesigning workflows around AI, integrating automation into executive support, building systems, and operating at a completely different level of speed and leverage than they were two years ago. Others have little access, little support, and little structured development around these tools.
It is an investment gap. We need organisations to understand that if they automate low-level tasks without redesigning roles around the higher-level judgement work that replaces them, they create confusion, not efficiency.
AI changes the value equation of the profession, but only if organisations evolve the role alongside the technology. Otherwise, Assistants simply inherit more complexity without the structural support needed to operate effectively inside it.
The Rise of the “Agent Boss”
Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index found that organisational factors such as culture, management support, and talent practices influence AI success more than the technology itself. In other words, the barrier is not whether people can use AI. The barrier is whether organisations redesign work properly around it. Administrative professionals have been living inside that gap for years. The capability exists already, but the structures that support that capability do not.
Microsoft’s big idea this year is the rise of what they call the “agent boss”: employees managing AI agents, coordinating outputs, directing workflows, reviewing quality, and deciding when human judgement overrides machine recommendation. The “agent boss” conversation misses something important: much of that is deeply familiar to senior Assistants, who already:
- Manage competing priorities
- Hold context across multiple moving parts
- Assess risk
- Escalate issues
- Protect executive attention
- Coordinate execution across complex systems
- Decide what matters and what does not
The Microsoft report found that the most advanced AI users increasingly value human oversight, critical thinking, and judgement. The more AI handles execution, the more valuable human discernment becomes. Administrative professionals have spent decades developing exactly those capabilities. That is operational administration at senior level.
AI Is Exposing the Value of the Profession
The administrative profession is not being displaced by AI in the simplistic way many predicted; if anything, AI is clarifying where the real value was all along – judgement, prioritisation, and contextual understanding. This is not a support role cautiously expanding around the edges. The operational centre of gravity has moved. Assistants are now coordinating cross-functional activity, managing information flow, supporting governance processes, translating strategic decisions into operational execution, and increasingly acting as the connective tissue between leadership intention and organisational delivery.
Those are profoundly human operational capabilities, which are becoming more valuable, not less. The Global Skills Matrix 2026 and Microsoft’s research arrive at the same conclusion from completely different directions. Most organisations are still classifying the role as though none of that has happened.
The future of work will increasingly reward the people capable of coordinating complexity, managing information flow, applying judgement, and translating strategy into execution. That is not new territory for this profession; the work has already been done. The recognition is simply overdue.
The value of human judgement is rising, not falling, and that matters enormously for this profession.
