Is this an office manager's job?

J

Joan

Guest
I am coming up to retirement and at present doing temporary work. At present I am working for a government organisation. I was not given a brief by the agency that I work for because the organisation is going through a restructure. However, I was told it was a senior administrator assignment paying 9.00 per hr.

For the first 3 days indeed it was a admin job but after that it became 3 post rolled into one. PA, HR and Admin.
My job now consists of arranging meetings

·Responsible for the co-ordination of the new Section for 21 Auditors
·Logging post on the data base and distribution
·Monitoring Annual leave
·Monitoring and recording staff leave and producing monthly reports
Compiling Procedure for Company Monitoring Service
Responsible for Health Assessment of new companies
Managing the section when the Regional Manager is out on appointments
Research on the intranet for documentation for the audit team
Responsible for booking travel for a team of 21 Auditors
Responsible for booking accommodation for 21 Auditors when out on Assignments and on away days.
Liaising with new organizations/companies
Uploading information on database
Responsible for setting up internal database for employees
Arranging Meetings electronically
Booking Rooms for meetings, interviews and testing
Taking minutes of meetings and distribution them within the department
Managing electronic diaries/calendars
Meeting and greeting all visitors for the manager
Responsible for expenses for the auditors and taking enquiries on them.
Responsible for new starters arranging passes into the office and building and introduction to other members of the team.
Ordering stationery on line and filing maintaining records on the Coda accounting system
Helping y with IT problems as and when necessary for new employees
Responsible for all the office equipment is working in the office, reporting equipment that is not in working order and having it replaced.

Do you think that this is an office manager post?
 
Hi Joan

This is not an office manager's job. A manager's job would involve some element of staff management, which you don't appear to have.

Describing this as a senior administrator is about right. It's not my area of expertise, but I would have guessed that it should pay around €30,000 per annum or around €15 per hour. If you are doing the job well, they are getting great value at €9 per hour. However, as you are using an agency, it's possible that you are being paid €9 per hour, but they are charging your employer a far higher amount.

They should pay you around €15 an hour. You would also be entitled to statutory holiday pay and bank holidays. They should charge the employer around €22.50 per hour worked. The agency may have a policy of charging the client as much as possible and paying the employee as little as possible.

Brendan
 
Sluice said:

Sorry Joan but this sounds like a secretary's job to me. In the past, there may have been a pool of secretary's (the 'typing pool') but, in today's world....?

I know I'm going to get blasted for this but, to be honest, the duties you describe is not that of an office manager. You have 101 little things to do for the more senior people in your office who probably charge by the hour for their time.

You don't make any decisions & the worst thing that could happen is that you double-book a meeting room (which is unlikely since a computer program probably wouldn't let you!)

Lotus Notes automates most of your duties.

Apologies for being so blunt.
Sluice

Janet said:

You sort of make the right point I think sluice but actually the opposite to what you say is true. You say that while a secretary may have been just a typist years ago nowadays a secretary does a lot more. This is true. But because the office environment has changed a lot, the type of duties which Joan describes are essentially the tasks that many companies now consider to be Office Manager jobs. It's essentially all just semantics. Most companies don't like to recruit "secretaries" anymore and instead you will find Office Administrators, Office Managers, Personal Assisstants, Executive Assistants and so on. The job is the same as it has been for years (it's my feeling anyway that the type of secretary who was more or less "just" a typist has been obsolete for a long, long time) but people put different labels on the jobs to try and make them more attractive to potential candidates. It differs from company to company obviously. A lowly administrator in one company might actually have more responsibility than an office manager somewhere else.

Brendan mentioned in another post that an Office Manager job would include some element of managing staff. However, this is not always the case. I have interviewed for Office Manager jobs which did not involve any direct staff management at all. Regardless, Joan mentions in her list of duties that she does manage the section in the absence of the regional manager. Personally Joan I think this is a mix of Office Manager and Executive Assistant but as I've already said different companies use different terms for these type of jobs so it's a very difficult question to answer.

By the way sluice it seems (and I think you know this since you say you expect to get blasted ) that you underestimate the value of a good secretary/administrator/office manager. We may not make any high level business decisions but the worst that could happen is not just that a meeting room is double-booked. These are the people without who most offices would just not be able to function at all.



sluice44 replied

Hi Janet,
Thanks for being not too critical....but I do appreciate the value of the various people within an organisation. For example, without the security guard (prob on minimum wage), the office won't open in the morning & the MD etc won't get in!

I was initially supportive of Joan but, after she listed her tasks, I wasn't. Again I would counter that she has 101 small tasks to do & her computer would automate most of it. Her position might be an vital cog in the office machinery but Joan isn't.

Let me put it this way, if Joan (or the security guard) was ill or absent for a month, could a temp do her job after a few hours training? Could the people she works for (auditors, I think) be replaced with a temp on short notice?

Sluice

joan said:

I disagree, that most of my tasks could be automatically done on the computer. The organisation that my assignment is with, is being reshaped and some of the tasks are one offs. My temporary position is to co-ordinate the office. Get systems up and running, which also included interviewing temporary staff for the filing system as well as the other tasks listed above.

sluice44, I agree that positions can be filled by other temporary staff but they would not stay long, especially young people. The manger told me when he interview me for the post that the position would frighten the pants of a young person. Apparently another person was sent for the assignment before me however when that person hear what was involved she declined to take up the position. Therefore other temporary people especially if they are young would not take on such a large workload for so little pay.

I would still like to hear what extra work that managers do??
 
My temporary position is to co-ordinate the office. Get systems up and running, which also included interviewing temporary staff for the filing system as well as the other tasks listed above.
Click to expand...

This can be spun two ways. One option is to say you're a consultant or a trouble-shooter who is there for a short time to identify problems and fix them on your own. The other option is that someone else identifies the problem & tells you what to do to fix the problem.

In other words, who gets the blame if things go wrong? The person who does the work should get paid less than the person who defines the work.

I would still like to hear what extra work that managers do??
Click to expand...
Today, in my little corner of the world, I had to placate a client who accounts for 1/3 of our business - this involved telling 4 people in different countries to drop everything etc. I had to approve the artwork for our vans. I had to approve a marketing strategy for a conference in Nov. I discussed/promised our sales figures for the next 6 mths. I had to complete a new contract with an international courier. I had to arrange/approve schedules for my staff for next week. I wrote a brief justifying hiring a retired person on a part-time contract. I met with 2 potential new clients.

If any of this goes wrong, it's my fault.

Also, I had to turn my phone off to eat some lunch. On this last point, do you start at 9am & finish at 5pm with a designated lunch-break?

Sluice
 
Sluice,

I don't think turning this into a "I work harder than you do" discussion is going to help.

Managers do not have to work longer than everyone else, unless they want to try to emulate a stereotype. Working outside defined hours is not a criteria for being a manager. It could indeed be taken as a sign of a manager who is not able to manage effectively and needs more time to complete tasks, or simply that they have more tasks allotted than they have time to complete them.

I would describe the original posters position as office manager. I would also describe it as office administrator.

The answer to the question of what extra work a manager does really depends on indeed be as you indicate - who gets the blame if something goes wrong ? On that basis the original poster is a manager - who gets the blame if everybody in the company takes the same weeks holidays because nobody thought of checking ? Who gets the blame if the big report can't get out because some non-manager broke the printer, looked around to see if he was spotted and walked away leaving it for someone else to fix ? Who gets the blame if travel expenses aren't paid ?

I would also argue that the definiton of manager normally involves some form of people management - and I think there was a reference to the interviewing and hiring of people.

I agree with Brendan that regardless of the semantics of the wording, this person should definitely be on a higher rate than they are getting.

z
 
Incidentally, I have had very similar jobs that were described as Network Administrator and Network Manager. Was I a 'manager' in one of them and not in the other ? I don't think so, to be honest, but the title said otherwise.

z
 
Re>

My boss asked me to stay on until February and then train the person that has been on leave. I am due to retire in at the end of November this year.
 
Hi Zag,
I don't think turning this into a "I work harder than you do" discussion is going to help
Click to expand...

Fair cop, guv. I wanted to delete what I wrote but I went to bed shortly after & was too lazy to get up again.


- Everyone takes the same holidays: An manager would authorise the holidays and Joan would record the info.

- Broken printer: would Joan be able to authorise someone going to the print shop & spending €200 for printing. A manager could make that decision & could probably use her company credit card to pay for it.

- Travel expenses: The blame would go to the claiment or the accounts dept. The claiments use Joan as a central point for their paperwork. A manager would sign off the expenses.

Management involves people management - can't argue with that.

Sluice
 
Re: Re>

Hi Joan,
I've re-read your original post. €9 an hour is shocking for what you do. My van drivers get €20k/yr which is about €11/hr, I think.

One option maybe is to take your retirement as planned. If you're that important to the office, you could get re-hired in a consultancy capacity. You could charge a lot more for your time. They need you & only you, don't they?

Sluice
 
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