An office manager is the person responsible for managing an office and keeping the company running smoothly. Not everybody is fit to be an office manager. The duties of this job are often as diverse as the company itself. While most departments keep to themselves and don't have a need to interact much with other departments, the office manager needs to interact with all the departments and fully understand what's going on in each department. Besides the CEO of a company, no one knows the ins and outs better than the office manager. In this lesson, you'll learn about the roles and qualities of an office manager. You'll also see what a typical day as an office manager is like.
Office managers are responsible for running the office, keeping office supplies stocked, and making sure the company stays profitable. That's right, office managers also work with CFOs and other financial executives of the company to make sure company expenses stay within budget. Why? Because the office manager interacts with all the departments of a company. They make sure each department knows what they need to do. They also collect financial and work reports from all departments. It is the office manager who interviews, selects, and then places employees in different departments of a company. The office manager is also the role model of the company. He or she coaches, counsels, and disciplines others as needed to ensure productivity and a healthy work environment.
A typical job description for an office manager might be the following:
From the job description of an office manager, it's clear that along with this diverse set of roles comes a diverse set of qualities that the office manager needs to possess. In order to fulfill all of the roles and responsibilities, an office manager needs to be flexible, fair, supportive, a strong organizer, initiator, and a good decision maker.
Since the office manager is the one that keeps the office and the company moving along, he or she needs to be supportive to all departments and team members. Office managers need to be hard workers so that when they delegate, people are willing to respond and help. And because they need to communicate with everybody in the company, office managers must have excellent communication and people skills. Flexibility is definitely required in the communication field since office managers must adjust their communication style to suit the needs of the individual team member.
A typical day as an office manager can get pretty hectic, especially in large companies. Your day starts by greeting everybody and making sure everybody knows what needs to be done for the day. Then you sit down to take care of paperwork. You work at creating schedules for the next week showing how much of the project has been done, how much needs to be done, and what's expected to be done by this week. You create specialized project schedules for each department of your company. You send a copy to the CEO before sending to each department.
You then hold meetings with each department to discuss the schedules. Later in the day, you set aside time to visit with different departments in the company to see what they need. You must also help those that need assistance. This increases company morale and creates a healthy work environment. After that, you begin to check the inventory of office supplies to see what needs to be ordered this week. Before you head home for the day, you plan some team-building activities to be done at the next company picnic.
Let's review. An office manager is the person in responsible for running an office and keeping the company running smoothly. The roles of an office manager are varied and typically include the following:
To fulfill these roles, office managers need to be:
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