What are the office manager duties? Are you a manager who is responsible for motivating a team in your office? Have you noticed your team morale is down? Do you want to redirect and re-energize in a way that is going to jumpstart your employees and help them feel more positive about their contributions at work?
If you’re wanting to shape a positive working environment and increase productivity in your workplace, then read on to get our 10 top office manager duties that directly correlate to more productivity – and a healthier working environment. Here’s what you can do right now:
10 Essential Office Manager Duties That Influence Everyone’s Productivity
Task #1: Believe
One of the top duties of an effective office manager is to believe in the employee. Micro-managers rarely get good reviews or create environments of trust. Instead, let go a little and trust your employees to do their jobs. They’ll surprise you with how they come through when you let them take the lead.
Task #2: Set Goals
Every employee wants to feel like they have something to offer — and that they are going somewhere. Make it a point to sit down with each of your employees and set individual goals so that they have specific things to work on and look forward to in the future.
Task #3: Re-Direct
An office manager is tasked with keeping an office running smoothly. And that’s why it’s so important to gently re-direct your employees when they are moving outside of the office protocols and structures. That doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible or inventive. You just need to keep them on task and prioritize what is most important to be completed in the daily operations of the office.
Task #4: Reward
There is nothing more motivating to an employee than to be publicly commended for a job well done. Everyone wants their work recognized, so make sure you have a process in place for honoring employees who go above and beyond to make the office a better place.
Task #5: Risk
Taking risks is an essential part of increasing production and making your employees happy. And it’s one of your critical office manager duties. That’s because risk encourages creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. If you’re not willing to create an office in which your employees can fail, then they won’t learn. And, they won’t come up with inventive ways to solve problems.
Task #6: Support
We don’t live in a vacuum at the office. An office manager needs to know enough about an employee’s personal life that he or she can help and support. Don’t be the aloof office manager who doesn’t know your employee is struggling with depression or had a death in the family. Being compassionate with the life issues your employees are dealing with is one of the essential office manager duties. Support them if they need time off or need to take longer leaves of absence. Your support will help them become better employees when they return to work.
Task #7: Build
Build a core team that will help you with specific tasks and make sure those team members are diverse and come with different points of view. Bringing together a team of people who seem like unlikely matches will create a unique group that takes risks, thinks inventively and comes up with solutions that are unique and different than like-minded people might arrive at. That’s because each person brings their unique voice and experiences to the table.
Task #8: Create
Create opportunities for your employees to voice their opinions. If they feel like they can be honest about how the office environment or the office processes are — and they feel like you are taking them into consideration — they will feel more like they are part of a contributing team. If you silence them, you won’t make them feel valued. Hearing their opinions doesn’t mean you have to implement all of their suggestions. This duty simply is about letting them be heard. And who knows, you may like some of their suggestions!
Task #9: Celebrate
As an office, it’s important to celebrate. You want to celebrate your accomplishments as a group — noting that what you’ve succeeded at couldn’t happen without the contributions of every person. That’s the beauty of a team — and if you can create an opportunity every year or quarter to acknowledge the collective contributions of the office — then you’ll find your employees feel happier, are more confident and truly do want to continue working hard for the good of the organization.
Task #10: Keep Boundaries
Finally, setting boundaries is a one of the healthiest office manager duties you can implement. You need to be compassionate, warm and open. But you also have protocols to follow and ways you agnate to be communicated with — and you teach your employees how to treat you by what you are willing to tolerate and what you’re not. So make sure you are setting boundaries about communication. For example, you may want to hold “office hours” for talking with your employees during the working day but let them know they can’t contact you after a certain time when the office closes.
In conclusion, every office manager should take time every now and then to access the environment in the workplace and to determine whether he or she is contributing to a negative or unhealthy environment.
If you’ve read this quick guide of office manager duties that influence productivity and you feel you are helping to create a negative workplace, then don’t lose heart. You can change the environment with a few simple amendments to your managerial style.
Try one of these tips every day until you’ve tried them all. Then, let us know how it went. Leave a comment below and tell us what we learned. We’re interested in hearing your success stories and how happy your employees become as a result!
Images taken from depositphotos.com.
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