20 Ways to Celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day

Administrative Professionals’ Day is coming up on April 27 and it’s a great opportunity to celebrate all of your admin team’s contributions to your organization.

Updated: February 9, 2023

Each year, Administrative Professionals’ Day is an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the great work done by the more than three million secretaries, administrative assistants, and other administrative office professionals in North America.

Believe it or not, the first iteration of this celebration dates all the way back to 1952 when U.S. Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer proclaimed the first observance of National Secretaries Week as June 1 to 7. This was changed to its current date as of 1955 and its name was updated shortly thereafter.

On a daily basis, administrative professionals all across the world work hard to keep organizations running smoothly.

And this year, Administrative Professionals Day falls on Wednesday, April 26. So, if you’re looking for a few ways to celebrate your all-star team, we’ve got you covered.

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9 Ways to Celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day In Person

When it comes to celebrating Administrative Professionals’ Day, you can choose to do anything from a small, thoughtful gesture to a fully-hosted in-person team building activity.

Here are a few things you can consider.

Give Them a Hand-Written Card

It might seem simple, but don’t underestimate the power of a hand-written card. It’s a small gesture that can have a big impact!

We’d recommend getting a great card and having the entire team sign it. Then, deliver it to your admin team members, maybe even with a small gift, like a box of chocolates or some fresh-baked pastries.

Take Them for Lunch

Another simple but impactful gesture is to take your administrative professionals out for lunch. This can be one-on-one as their leader, or with the entire team.

Simply ask them where their favorite lunch spot is, book a reservation, and enjoy!

Host a Team Happy Hour

Everybody loves having some time to socialize with their colleagues in a non-work capacity. And that’s why happy hours are a perfect way to help your team unwind and have some fun together.

It’s great to have fun, sip a few beverages, have some snacks, and chat, but if you’re looking to add another fun element to the equation, we’ve got an activity you might like.

Happy Hour Trivia

Hamish’s legendary happy hour trivia features two rounds of trivia questions, featuring four themed categories of your choice. With 20 category options to choose from, you’ll be sure to find the perfect themes for your team’s happy hour trivia.

With pub soundscapes, visual surprises, and warm-hearted humor, Hamish McDuff makes your guests feel like they just had a memorable happy hour with friends in a real pub, while at work! Sorry, HR!

This pub trivia game experience is guaranteed to produce plenty of laughs and lift team “spirits.” It might even include a few special surprises.

Give Them the Afternoon Off

If you want to thank your administrative professionals for all their hard work, give them the gift of time and let them go home early that day.

Having an afternoon off will give them a chance to celebrate however they want—whether that’s spending time with friends or family or heading home to relax and unwind.

Decorate Their Desk

To make your administrative professionals feel special, get your team to stay a little bit late the day before or come in a little early on the morning of Administrative Professionals’ Day and decorate their desk.

Some good touches include things like balloons, team photos, notes with memories or kudos, ribbons—the possibilities are endless.

When your admin pros get in for the day, they won’t be able to help but smile at this gesture.

Do a Scavenger Hunt

If your team likes to get active, it’s a great idea to head out of the office to celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day.

If you ask us, one of the best ways to do this is with a scavenger hunt team building activity.

Wild Goose Chase

In this scavenger hunt activity, your team can get out of the office and explore your city in a whole new way. Together, your team will need to think outside the box, bond as a group, and venture outside into the community in order to complete a series of fun and unique photo and video challenges.

The Amazing Chase

Inspired by the popular reality TV show The Amazing Race – on which teams race around the world, with each leg of the competition requiring the groups to solve puzzles, interact with locals, and complete challenges – this interactive scavenger hunt has teams following clues around their city and taking on physical and mental challenges to move on to the next destination. With more teams in play, the stakes are even higher, and the competition is even more fierce.

Random Acts of Kindness

Doing good for others has been proven to make people happier, and that makes it an even better way to celebrate Administrative Professional Day. Get your team outside for a philanthropic team building activity where they’ll perform good deeds in your community, complete fun challenges, and explore your city. 

Team Photo Shoot

Make some forever memories on Administrative Professionals’ Day and hire a photographer to come in and take some fun individual and team photos.

You can make this extra fun by incorporating some props and letting your team get a laugh out of it all. Then, you can either share the individual photos or do something unique like creating desk calendars with the pictures or putting them onto mugs for your team.

Bring Them a Coffee or Treat to Start the Day

Another simple, small, and kind gesture is to bring your administrative pros their favorite coffee, beverage, or treat to start the day.

You can even consider hosting a team coffee meeting in the morning so that everyone can connect for a few minutes, have a cup of joe, and a quick bite before they start work.

Offer Them the Training Program of Their Choice

For many people, the best form of recognition is to feel valued. And sometimes, investing in your employees’ development is a perfect way to show them you value them.

So, if you’ve got a team of administrative professionals who are eager to learn and grow their skills, consider offering them their choice of training and development program.

Practical Time Management

Administrative professionals have incredibly busy days, and they always have a lot to stay on top of. So, with a training program like Practical Time Management, you can help them streamline their processes and reduce their workday stressors. 

Confident Decision Making  

With so much on the go during any given workday, the ability to confidently make quick decisions can help make life much easier for your administrative professionals. And with a training program like Confident Decision Making, you can help your team make fast calls with greater confidence.

11 Virtual Ways to Celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day Remotely

If your administrative pros work remotely and you can’t celebrate together in person, here area a few ideas for how you can celebrate virtually.

Recognize Them Publicly

Nothing says that you appreciate your administrative professionals more than public recognition. So, take some time to personally shout them out to your team and your customers.

This could include writing up a blog post profiling them, posting about them on your social media, or sending out internal and external emails recognizing them and thanking them for their efforts.

Send Them a Gift Basket

You can have a display of appreciation delivered right to your remote admin team’s front doors! Believe it or not, food can help your team feel valued, connected, and motivated to do the best work of their lives, wherever work may be. That’s the philosophy at Caroo, a company that provides affordable boxes with all kinds of incredible food and beverage goodies. They’ve even got a 60-second quiz to help you get personalized recommendations for your admin team.

Do a Virtual Team Building Activity

There’s nothing like a little bit of fun to help celebrate hard work. So, for Administrative Professionals’ Day, you might want to consider hosting a virtual team building activity.

We’ve got a few you’ll love.

Virtual Friendly Feud Social

If you’ve ever wanted to take part in your own Family Feud-style competition, this is your chance! With Virtual Friendly Feud Social, you and your colleagues will break out into teams to compete through survey questions focused on culture and human nature.

And, as an added social element within the game, each round of questions will be followed by a guided social mixer where you’ll have the chance to take part in a group discussion and more deeply explore the survey questions from the previous round.

Virtual Hollywood Murder Mystery

The case is fresh, but here’s what we know so far: we’ve got an up-and-coming actress who’s been found dead in her hotel room following last night’s awards show. We have several suspects, but we haven’t been able to put the crime on any of them for sure yet.

Now, it’s up to you and your remote team of virtual detectives to crack the case. Together, you’ll review case files and evidence including police reports, coroners’ reports, photo evidence, tabloids, interrogations, and phone calls as you determine the motive, method, and murderer and bring justice for the victim.

You’ll need to put your problem-solving skills to the test as you share theories, collaborate, and think outside the box with your fellow investigators.

Virtual Escape Room: Mummy’s Curse

Your remote team has been transported into a pyramid cursed by a restless mummy. Now you must uncover the secrets of Ancient Egypt in order to lift the mummy’s curse and return before the portal closes forever.

Your team’s problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills will be put to the test, as they race against the clock (and their peers) to solve the mummy’s complex clues and puzzles.

Does your team have what it takes to lift this ancient curse, once and for all?

Virtual Jeoparty Social

With Virtual Jeoparty Social, you and your colleagues will step into your very own virtual Jeopardy-style game show—equipped with a buzzer button, a professional actor as your host, and an immersive game show platform!

Best of all, this game has been infused with an ultra-social twist: players will take part in a unique social mixer challenge between each round.

Virtual Escape Room: Jewel Heist

With Virtual Escape Room: Jewel Heist, you and your team will need to retrieve a bounty of stolen jewels by uncovering hidden clues and solving a series of brain-boggling challenges. You’ll need to exercise collaboration, creative problem-solving, and outside-the-box thinking to track them down. But you’ll have to be quick! The clock is ticking before the stolen score is gone forever. 

Virtual Clue Murder Mystery

Using video conferencing software alongside Outback’s proprietary app, your group will split into teams, examine clues, review case files, and channel their inner detectives as they race against the clock to solve the mystery of who had the means, motive, and opportunity to murder Neil Davidson.  

Virtual Team Pursuit

Help your remote team get re-energized by tackling fun virtual challenges with their colleagues. In groups, your remote employees will tackle a series of mental, physical, skill, and mystery challenges, earning points for each one successfully completed. Whichever has the most points when time runs out will be crowned the winners!  

And if this sounds like it’s up your alley, you’ll probably love these 31 incredible Zoom games to play with your colleagues.

Send Them a Gift Card

Send your administrative professionals the gift card of their choice so that they can celebrate how they see fit.

At Outback, we use an employee recognition and rewards service called Guusto that lets you send your team members a dollar value that can be used towards hundreds of different stores, companies, and services.

Connect for a Virtual Coffee Break

For remote employees, lacking in-person connection can be tolling. So, celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day by getting your team together on a video conferencing platform for a virtual coffee break.

This is a great opportunity for them to simply sit back, chat, and catch up in a relaxed setting. And, if you want to make this even more exciting, you can send them each a gift card that they can use to buy their favorite beverage.

You might also want to consider working in some icebreaker questions for an added element of fun. In case you need some inspiration, we’ve got a list of The 300 Best Team Building Icebreaker Questions for Work, which includes:

• Be honest, how often do you work from bed?
• If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
• If you could pick up a new skill in an instant, what would it be?
• If you could add a word to the dictionary, what would you add and what would it mean?
• The zombie apocalypse is coming. Who are three people you want on your team?

These questions are a great way to share a laugh and to help your team get to know each other better.

Offer Them Blackout Hours

In the previous section, we mentioned how you can give your administrative professionals the afternoon off work.

Another idea you can use is to add “blackout hours” into their calendars for the day.

These hours can be used for anything they please, whether it’s an extra-long lunch, a walk with a colleague, or even a nap.

Whatever it is, the point is simply to give them back some time in their day for them to do with what they please.

Host a Virtual Happy Hour

Toast your administrative professionals with a virtual happy hour! Just like the coffee break, this is a great way to help your team connect—with a boozy twist.

You might want to check out Virtual Happy Hour Trivia. This is no ordinary happy hour trivia game. In this activity, you and your team will take a trip to Hamish McDuff’s virtual pub. This hilarious Scottish pub owner is the legendary host of a trivia game with more than 20 category options to choose from, including sports, food and drink, and even celebrity real estate. This virtual pub trivia game is guaranteed to produce plenty of laughs and lift team “spirits.” It might even include a few special surprises.

And if you’re looking for ways to host an incredibly virtual happy hour, check out these 35 Unbeatable Virtual Happy Hour Games you can try.

Order Them Lunch

Just because your team works remotely doesn’t mean you can’t all share a meal together. Celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day by ordering your team lunch to wherever they work and then get together on a video conferencing call to chat over a meal.

Pro tip: UberEats actually has a corporate account that lets you send codes to your employees so they can order what they’d like to wherever they’re located and have it charge back to the company card.

Host a Virtual Trivia Party

If you’ve got a high-energy team that likes to have some fun and share a laugh, you might want to consider hosting a virtual trivia party.

This is a great way to help your team have fun, share laughs, work together, and tap into their competitive spirits, all at the same time.

Not sure where to start? You might want to check out Virtual Time Machine Trivia where you’ll step into the Outback Time Machine and take a trip through pop culture history. Transform your home offices into a virtual game show experience – game show host, scoreboard, buzzer, and all!

Or, if you’re looking for other ideas, we can help you take the guesswork out of this process with these 15 Incredible Virtual Trivia Games for Work Teams.

Create a Peer Recognition Video

This one takes a little bit of planning and some elbow grease, but it’s an amazing way to help make your administrative professionals feel recognized.

In the weeks leading up to Administrative Professionals’ Day, ask each of your remote employees to record a short video thanking your admin pros for all of their incredible work.

Then, edit together a short peer recognition video that you can share with them.

Send a Cameo

Speaking of videos, here’s another fun idea.

While it’s great for you and your team to recognize your administrative professionals, it’s another level of fun to let a celebrity do it for you.

You can use Cameo to find a well-known person who will record a custom video for your admin pros. From actors to athletes, musicians, and more, there are celebrities of all kinds available at all different price points, so you’ll certainly find a ton to choose from.

Administrative Professionals’ Day only comes around once a year, so make sure you’re taking the time to recognize all of the hard work your admin pros do to help your organization operate smoothly.

How are you celebrating Administrative Professionals’ Day? Let us know in the comments section!

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Learn about fun and high-energy team building activities you can incorporate into your Administrative Professionals’ Day celebrations.

If you’ve got questions about how team building can be a fun and engaging way to celebrate Administrative Professionals’ Day, reach out to an Employee Engagement Consultant.  

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