Office Management is a popular career, but if you are thinking of pursuing this career, you may well ask, what is an office manager? An Office Manager is a job that runs the office administration team and ensures that the office runs smoothly. The office administration team comprises several individuals with different seniority and qualifications. You will need to possess managerial skills to lead your team. In a typical office setting, you expect to find;

  • Secretaries – The primary duties of a secretary include keeping minutes, archiving, handling mailing lists and so on.
  • Receptionist – An office receptionist’s primary responsibility is to receive visitors that visit the office, among other unspecified functions.
  • PAs – Personal Assistants can be in charge of supporting a manager. They can also support the office team and are vital in working with the Office Manager to ensure everything is running smoothly.
  • IT Team – The IT team is vital in a modern-day office. They ensure all IT levels in the office are taken care of. Of course, this includes making sure that networking is properly done. Majorly, they ensure proper connection within and without the office.
  • Health and Safety Officer – Takes care of the office’s health and safety issues. Naturally, this is a major part of running an office, and you will need to work with the Health and Safety Officer.
  • Administrative Assistants – These work directly for the Office Manager. They work on delivering any administrative task effectively.

The full cast of office employees may grow, and responsibilities may pile up. Admittedly, this is where an office manager comes into play, ensuring that every function within and outside the office runs efficiently.

What is an Office Manager?

To achieve this, the skills of the Office Manager should be diverse. They will need to possess a mix of these skills to be successful:

  • Leadership Skills
  • Communication Skills
  • Managerial Skills
  • Teamworking Skills
  • IT Skills
  • Budgeting Skills
  • Time Management
  • Meeting deadlines
  • Adaptability
  • Knowledge of legislation such as GDPR, Health and Safety and much more.
  • Prioritisations Skills
  • Delegation Skills
  • Change Management Skills

Looking at the list above, you can see that the mix of skills required by an Office Manager is diverse. However, you must realise that it is not essential to be an expert in these areas, but you must have a broad range of abilities.

How to become an Office Manager

Anyone who wants to become an Office Manager should have the necessary qualifications and training. However, work experience is also very important. This is because many of the skills listed above need the practice to master them truly. As with all management roles, you must possess leadership qualities and be able to cope with change.

The management of employees in your office is likely to be a challenging task. Managing your team will include some of the issues below:

  • Performance Management of the Team
  • Recruitment and Selection of your team
  • Motivating and Inspiring your team
  • Dealing with personal issues
  • Grievances and Disciplinaries
  • Developing your team to be more effective and efficient/
  • Team building

This managerial aspect of the role is one of the most important aspects. However, this is always in conjunction with more technical skills required to run an office without any issues.