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What is an Office Manager?
An office manager acts as the support and facilitation for an organization. That is, the office manager is essentially in charge of completing the administrative tasks necessary to keep a business running. Generally office managers’ skillsets are both highly interpersonal and organizational. The job is largely clerical and requires strong organizational skills and attention to detail, combined with strong leadership and communication skills. While the emphasis is on the administrative necessities of any business, by virtue of managing an office, this includes working with a number of different departments and individuals to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Office managers act as office support at the highest level, providing aid with the necessary administrative tasks that keep a business running.
What are the daily duties for an Office Manager?
In terms of daily duties for office managers, these can range from maintaining procedure regarding payroll, employee hours, and processing paperwork to hiring and training new employees, and planning meetings and work-related events. As office manager, one’s role ranges from highly clerical to highly interpersonal, and it is a great benefit to have both these skill sets. Similarly, they also handle protocol for that office, including formality in relation to human resources, and health and medical protocol. That is, the office manager is in charge of ensuring that the business as a whole runs smoothly from an organizational perspective. Rather than working in the field itself, they are focused on the running and functioning of the office.
Job Description for an Office Manager
To summarize this into a general office management job description: Office managers are in charge of ensuring that a business runs smoothly on a daily basis. This includes managing paper, schedules, and being the point of contact for many different departments. While highly organizational and clerical in nature, oftentimes handling specific reports, protocols, and technical necessities, the office manager is also extremely communicative, and works with nearly every aspect of the business closely. Through understanding of the role as high-level office support, the office manager job description emphasizes the clerical and administrative nature. This administrative side requires comfortable use of phones, databases, and familiarity with essentially all required protocol and rules of the office itself. That is, an individual who is extremely organized and detail oriented is required for the office support side of office management.
What are the essential skills and qualifications necessary for an Office Manager?
To be a good office manager, there are a number of different skill sets that are hugely beneficial. The office manager job description essentially breaks the main skills down into three main categories: organizational, managerial, and technical skills. Under the organizational umbrella are tasks like maintaining records, planning meetings and events, scheduling and facilities, and document preparation. These all require strong attention to detail and prioritizing skills. Managerial skills fall into the more interpersonal and leadership qualities. These kinds of skills, for an office manager, include problem solving, delegating tasks, and communication. All of which are vital to be able to maintain a functioning and productive office environment. Finally the technical skills of the office manager are competence with various tools oftentimes used in these tasks. These include Microsoft office, excel specifically, document preparation, and the knowledge of how formal paperwork is completed and executed. Generally technical knowledge is all of that which goes into organizing any office procedure whether it be tax documents, hiring forms, or the technology used to schedule meetings.
In terms of professional qualifications, office managers do not require a specific degree or training course, rather, the emphasis is on previous administrative or clerical experience. With that being said, however, a good way to gain this experience and demonstrate competence when applying for an office manager job is to have taken an office manager course. These office manager courses can be offered online or in person through any number of Dublin and Irish institutions. If you are interested in reaching a professional qualification in entering the office management field, simply google office management courses and choose the one most suited to your needs from those offered.
With that being said, the purpose of these courses and more formal training is to be able to clearly demonstrate these necessary clerical abilities and the skills required to balance the many tasks asked of the office manager. These courses emphasize the technical and skilled nature of office support and administrative work, that requires a great deal of specified knowledge of procedure, software, and organizational systems. In entering an office manager field, it is highly beneficial to be familiar with some of the most used of these, including Excel, familiarity with tax and legal documents, as well as familiarity with scheduling software, phone skills, and managing large numbers of people and tasks at once. These courses are aimed at providing familiarity with the technical and administrative aspects of the position.
What is the salary of an Office Manager and are there career expectations?
According to ie.talent.com, the average office manager salary is €39,176 annually, with the entry level salary starting around €35,000 and highly experienced office manager making up to €50,000 per year. The discrepancy between the entry level and the highest average salary tends to be a result of skill and experience, rather than education level. Though there is an impact in starting salary of one’s education level in a specific field, in the cases of office manager salaries, one’s experience has more of an effect than one’s education, per se. The office manager courses discussed above, in this scenario, are not necessarily as an educational aspect, but rather, to demonstrate a level of skill and experience. In an office manager job, experience is arguably the most important. This generally is due to the complex nature of the career itself. In order to be an effective office manager, one has to be able to balance the clerical and vital tasks of the functioning of an entire business. Rather than just paperwork for HR, or payroll, or any individual department, they must be able to work cohesively with all of them, and generally report to a high- level official within the structure of the business, whether it be a CEO or an executive.