Office Management Tips For Small Businesses

culled from:http://sesema.com

• Create and stick to Routines: Business is all about doing the same thing over and over again. The time at which your office opens or closes, lunch time, how much is the working hours and how an email is handled and responded e.t.c
• Create Processes: This is very important in the time of employee conflict. Imagine your company coming to a standstill due to an employee issue. Put these agreements in paper and make sure to let everybody know. Process of getting leaves, like ‘how many leaves an employee can take’ can help you to manage work force.
• Divide Responsibilities and Roles: A good office knows who is responsible for what, if something is missing or not working, you should know who to call attention to.
• Keep Records of everything: Let it be your first customer contact, employee, investment, anything…..you should have the records in your hand. Better still is to make an arrangement to record your everyday activities, like how many sales, how much work done in a day by each member, how much income/expense and profit and keep all the records up-to-date.
• Safety of your valuable documents: Not only it is important to keep all the records but also in place where it is theft free and safe. Insure yourself for such things. There are some documents you may want to dispose and may have crucial information of your company, best is to shred or burn them to prevent its misuse.
• Office Equipment: You don’t need every piece of office equipment out there to run a smooth operation. But you need certain products that are going to optimize people’s performance. What you need and how much it will cost are simple but important considerations.
• Task Management: Keeping track of projects is critical to the successful completion of important tasks and represents an essential piece of documentation. Knowing when things have to be   completed and by whom gives everyone a clear idea of what’s ahead.