Even with a small staff, which includes only the head of the company and its employees, a responsible employee is needed, who would be the organizing force, able to direct and control the work process - this idea determines the text of the job description of the office manager.
Such a position requires the applicant to have a set of certain skills and appropriate education, as well as the ability to interact with people. However, this list of requirements is not limited to.
Job description
Already at the stage of applying for a position, a candidate can familiarize himself with a regulatory act regulating his rights, duties and area of responsibility in a company. Such a document is called job description. It consists of five main sections:
- General Provisions They contain all organizational information: the name of the enterprise, the position held and the structural unit to which it belongs. It also indicates subordination, the procedure for filling a position and dismissal, as well as educational and qualification requirements.
- Responsibilities. This section lists the responsibilities of the employee, as well as how to implement them.
- The rights of the employee, that is, all the additional features that contribute to the effective performance of duties.
- Responsibility. In accordance with this section, management decides on the assessment of the quality of labor, promotion or fine.
- Relationship This section governs all communications with external and internal units that may arise from the employee in the process of exercising his functions.
Principles of writing job descriptions
The normative base for the preparation of such documents is the Qualification Directory of the posts of managers, specialists and other employees (1998). During its development, considerable attention was paid to the description of the position and conditions for the employee to fulfill his duties. The specifics of the work are included in the title of the document, for example, “Job description of the secretary” (office manager or chief accountant).
In addition, if there are two posts with the same names, but with different tasks, then different documents should be prepared reflecting these differences. The job descriptions of the office manager of the personnel officer have certain differences from the same regulatory act for the secretary.
Office Manager Requirements
One way or another, a candidate for a position will have to lead people. It can be just a couple of people in a small company or all the administrative staff in a large enterprise. Naturally, the applicant must be a confident PC user and be able to work with other office equipment (scanner, printer or fax). The office manager is often a representative of the company, so a compulsory speech and the ability to write business letters is a prerequisite. Very often companies require such employees to know the basics of paperwork and labor law. Proficiency in at least one foreign language is still a desirable skill, however, when applying for a large enterprise, this is already one of the mandatory requirements.
In some cases, the office manager has to combine his duties with the functions of other employees. This leads to an increase in required skills. So, an office manager with the functions of an accountant must have an appropriate education and have special programs.
Main responsibilities
A typical job description of an office manager with secretary functions includes the following items:
- processing of mail items, both incoming and outgoing; their redistribution within the company;
- control over the timing of the fulfillment of obligations under contracts and agreements;
- making outgoing and receiving incoming calls;
- work with clients and representatives of partner companies;
- monitoring the availability of necessary stationery;
- maintaining office equipment in working condition and calling specialists in case of breakdown;
- distribution of time within the work schedule (in some cases for the head);
- organization of necessary events (meetings, conferences, business trips, corporate parties);
- meeting logging;
- updating and replenishment of fresh content on the corporate site.
This list includes only basic requirements. Other items may be added in accordance with the specifics of the concluded labor contract. The job description of the office manager with the functions of a personnel officer, for example, requires an employee to keep and provide all the accounting documentation in a timely manner or to replace the head of the personnel department in case of his absence.
Additional Responsibilities
In addition to the main functions, the job description of the office manager contains a list of different responsibilities, which may vary depending on the directions of the company. An office manager may be required to work with administrative authorities, that is, obtain permission to conduct trade, open a branch of a company or subsidiary, etc.
One of the most crucial tasks is the actual management of the company in the absence of its director. Of course, this is possible only if the employee has established himself as a responsible and reliable person on whom you can rely. In addition, the job description of the office manager often contains a clause on the need to draw up a general power of attorney. Such a document may be required, for example, to receive mail items of a high degree of importance.
Informal requirements
Large companies usually allow in advance to familiarize themselves with the sample job description of the office manager for candidates for this position, so that they are fully aware of the list of requirements and responsibilities.
But even at the sight of such powers, the applicant must understand that he remains one of the many employees of the enterprise. In this regard, one should not forget about what is not spelled out in the job description. An office manager with the functions of a secretary must be a person who has a delicate sense of time in order to be able to distribute it in the necessary way.
Workflow Tasks
The most important requirement for his work is efficiency, therefore, a person holding such a position is obliged to economically consume office materials, to control the amount of electricity consumed.
For other employees, the office manager is responsible almost on a par with the head. By virtue of this, he must ensure that working conditions are in accordance with accepted sanitary standards and safety rules. Finally, in the performance of his direct duties, the office manager gains access to classified documents, so one of the requirements is the signing of a non-disclosure agreement on trade secrets or any other information that could harm the company's market position.
Office Manager Rights
Of course, fulfilling such a number of duties allows an employee to exercise special rights. They are also spelled out in the job description of the office manager. The essence of some of them, such as the ability to access confidential information, stems directly from the need to fulfill their job responsibilities. Others are associated with power privileges. So, the office manager has the right to demand from the rest of the staff to correct the mistakes made by them in negligence in the production documents, to establish the amount of incentives for them or to apply penalties to negligent.
Often, the office manager is the link between employees and executives. Such a position allows him to achieve better working conditions and present collective wishes for improving the quality of work of both a particular department and the enterprise as a whole.
Features of the job description of the office manager of the sales department
Office managers have long been indispensable in large and not-so-large companies, so they need some special skills to fill such a vacancy. A common case is when several office managers with special functions, over which a senior is standing, work at the same enterprise. Their job descriptions essentially coincide, but differ in an additional set of functions.
So, if the office manager works in the sales department, his job description may contain such items as:
- search for new points of sale;
- tracking changes in the structure of demand;
- preparation of reporting documents on perfect sales;
- direct work with the client to receive orders and their subsequent processing;
- work on informing customers about possible changes in the assortment of goods and recalculation of prices;
- organization of necessary meetings;
- signing of contracts for the supply of goods.
Further requirements may be related to the specifics of the goods offered by the company. If the company is associated with the sale of real estate, then the duties of the office manager may include the preparation of information booklets and the preparation of specific documents.
Office Manager Responsibility
In the case of non-fulfillment of their duties, when committing offenses, including disclosing trade secrets, or performing other actions detrimental to the image of the company, the office manager is responsible in accordance with the norms of the administrative, civil and criminal codes. If material damage was caused to the organization, then the punishment shall be imposed in accordance with the provisions of the labor code.