In December 2019 we hosted the first ever Anderson Hoare Assistant Awards and, after a very tough decision making process, we were absolutely delighted to award Emily Poyser-Beezley with the title of Anderson Hoare Assistant Of The Year 2019.

We were totally overwhelmed by the amount of entries for we had for the Assistant Awards and the competition was extremely strong, after talking to Rick (Emily's boss) we decided to award Emily the winning prize for a number of reasons:

1. Ability to adapt to change

Rick passionately spoke about how impressed he was with Emily's ability to adapt to changing situations in the company and always stay one step ahead. Never letting anything phase her and taking everything in her stride. He mentioned that there is a lot of governance and technicalities involved in Emily's job, and that she had an exceptional ability to tackle new challenges.

2. Prioritisation

Rick was incredibly impressed by the way Emily prioritised tasks and meetings, ensuring that his diary was always coordinated perfectly with a balance of important meetings and also meeting-free time for essential email catch ups. Emily is able to do this so well because she has established such good working relationships with other admins in and outside the company and adapted the way she runs Rick’s diary to ensure it is totally in line with his preferred ways of working.

3. Her professional manner

Rick was exceedingly impressed with how Emily conducted herself professionally, he mentioned that she never seems to get flustered and always has a can-do attitude, meaning that she just got stuff done without complaint or ever being grumpy! He was also impressed with her ability to challenge him when needed and steer him away from doing things that were unhelpful! This is a really respectable quality as it’s such a fine line and really shows an exceptionally impressive admin if you can get it right.

In addition to the honour of winning and an additional acilade to include on her CV, as part of her prize Emily also won a weekend stay, including supper, at the beautiful Beckford Arms in Tisbury and a bathroom full of Bramley Products!

We met up with Emily and her boss Rick Lones who nominated her for the award at the begining of January to congratulate her in person and give her her prize! Emily's attitude is inspirational to other assistants and awards such as these are a fantastic way for us as recruiters to gleam more insight into what makes a good assistant from a boss's perspective. This means we can advise you even more accurately on specific skills that stand out for a 21st century assistant.

If you would like information on The Anderson Hoare Assistant Awards 2020 please email lottie@andersonhoare.co.uk. For details of all our lives jobs head to our job board here.