I just finished up a conference call I have monthly with my fellow office managers working across the state. During the call I informed them of my pending work project of comprising a comprehensive work coverage plan for our position. I also told them my project would entail having to gather information from each of them regarding their processes, deadlines, responsibilities and overall scheduling of tasks since I am well aware of it being different across the board (each NCG site operates differently).
One of the research tools I will be using to compile the needed data is a survey questionnaire, which will be emailed out to each office manager. I did inform them that this is not MANDATORY, and I am sensitive to their busy schedules ensuring them it would take no longer than 15 minutes to complete. To add a little incentive for their efforts I disclosed for those who choose to participate in the survey will be entered in a drawing for a gift card. Depending on the outcomes of the distributed survey, I will possibly contact individual office managers via phone/email for clarification or expansion of their feedback.
During the conference call I also encouraged office managers to feel free to contact me aside from the survey should they have suggestions, concerns or input of any kind. After all, this project is intended to HELP the office managers and to improve their work experience. So far I am feeling very inspired and encouraged with this project-after I presented it in my meeting I received nothing but positive from my coworkers. Everyone was in agreement that this has been an issue consistently discussed, yet never addressed.
The game plan now is to comprise my survey questionnaire over the weekend.
Short term goal: Email out questionnaire to office managers by next Thursday (02/07/13).
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Week One: Laying the Foundation
Every week I meet with my Site Director for supervision where everything from landlord issues, staff morale to upcoming team building events are discussed. We also are always addressing concerns and looking for ways to improve productivity, efficiency and performance within the workplace and my job as an Office Manager in particular. Last week I addressed the matter of my needing a project for my Performance Analysis and Needs Assessment course that would identify and resolve a problem area within the office.
Coincidentally, we had just discussed earlier in the meeting how our company does not currently have a work coverage protocol for my position. This is a major problem because there are job duties/responsibilities that only those in my position know how to do and have certain deadlines that cannot be extended. In short, no one in my office can do my job. The words "cross training" apparently mean nothing to them with administrative positions. Therefore the company is finding their office managers can never take leave, are coming in to the office sick and when they do take leave are planning the dates around the established deadlines. Upper management is aware how this is not fair to those in my position and also at times unavoidable, emergencies come up.
What really caused for urgency to remedy this matter was the fast approach of my taking a leave of absence to study abroad in May. I did offer six different work coverage plans for my office specifically in my proposal, however, those plans are not applicable to all 18 of our offices. For example, corporate is just now updating our job description (has not been updated in 19 years) and should be distributing it out within the next month upon our CEO's review and approval. When they first decided to revise the job description they put together a Performance Improvement Team (PIT) that consisted of myself and three other office managers in my company, along with our director of human resources.
Between myself and the three other office managers (about a quarter of all office managers in the company) it became quite clear how different the work load, work duties and overall organization of each office was. With this in mind, it will be just as difficult to streamline a work coverage plan for the company. You need to know the details of the work being covered for an effective work coverage plan, right? The idea of this project is to not have to tailor each work coverage plan per site, however, to have an overall streamlined office manager work coverage protocol that can be rolled out to all offices. The same. Easier said than done is the feeling I am getting.
I first plan to create a survey for all of my office managers to complete and will do follow up phone interviews if needed. That's as far as this project has gotten for now.
Stay tuned...it's going to be a bumpy ride!
Coincidentally, we had just discussed earlier in the meeting how our company does not currently have a work coverage protocol for my position. This is a major problem because there are job duties/responsibilities that only those in my position know how to do and have certain deadlines that cannot be extended. In short, no one in my office can do my job. The words "cross training" apparently mean nothing to them with administrative positions. Therefore the company is finding their office managers can never take leave, are coming in to the office sick and when they do take leave are planning the dates around the established deadlines. Upper management is aware how this is not fair to those in my position and also at times unavoidable, emergencies come up.
What really caused for urgency to remedy this matter was the fast approach of my taking a leave of absence to study abroad in May. I did offer six different work coverage plans for my office specifically in my proposal, however, those plans are not applicable to all 18 of our offices. For example, corporate is just now updating our job description (has not been updated in 19 years) and should be distributing it out within the next month upon our CEO's review and approval. When they first decided to revise the job description they put together a Performance Improvement Team (PIT) that consisted of myself and three other office managers in my company, along with our director of human resources.
Between myself and the three other office managers (about a quarter of all office managers in the company) it became quite clear how different the work load, work duties and overall organization of each office was. With this in mind, it will be just as difficult to streamline a work coverage plan for the company. You need to know the details of the work being covered for an effective work coverage plan, right? The idea of this project is to not have to tailor each work coverage plan per site, however, to have an overall streamlined office manager work coverage protocol that can be rolled out to all offices. The same. Easier said than done is the feeling I am getting.
I first plan to create a survey for all of my office managers to complete and will do follow up phone interviews if needed. That's as far as this project has gotten for now.
Stay tuned...it's going to be a bumpy ride!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)