Management Tips For Office Managers

In today's high-paced, competitive workforce an effective office manager is key to successful business operation. As an effective office manager you need to understand your role, and your key objectives. The key responsibility of any office manager is to ensure the smooth operation of day-to-day business. An Office Manager is a tactical manager. As a tactical manager you normally have the following key responsibilities.

1. Understand the strategic plan. This is harder than it sounds. It is not always easy to get a clear vision of your objectives from your leadership team. Keep asking for it until you get it, and accept and understand that you may never get a clear answer on this.

Ask how your performance will be measured. If you can't get a straight answer on the objectives, you can often figure them out by what you are being measured on. Strategic planners measure their staff on things that reflect what they want done. Your real objective is to meet not just the measurements, but also to meet the intent of the measurements. 2. Communicate your objectives. Start by writing down your best interpretation of what you think you are supposed to accomplish. Always pick 2 or 3 key objectives for the year.

Communicate them to your boss (this is what I'm planning to do, tell me if you want any changes) Communicate them to your team. Don't wait for your boss's approval (unless additional spending is required).Start. If your boss disagrees, then make the necessary course corrections. Show some initiative. This is your team. If you're struggling with where to start suggest looking at ways to reduce office costs and ways to improve making accurate time estimates and meeting them. The main thing is that you put together a plan and show that you have an organized direction.

Tactical managers must be able to organize details and turn objectives into plans. 3. Motivate your team. Tell them what the objectives are. Tell them what they will be evaluated on. Ask them for ideas on how to accomplish the objectives. Listen to them. Whenever possible give people credit for their ideas. Whatever you do, don't try to keep all the planning to yourself. The more you modify your plans with the ideas of your team, the more cooperation you will get in achieving them. 4. Monitor progress, communicate progress and deviations, and make course corrections. Your leaders want measurements. It's the only way they know something is happening.

Before people signed up the fine print said they were giving up rights to sue Equifax over the breach. Instead putting you into something called forced arbitration if you wanted to make a legal challenge. Mike Dansack, with Gallon Takacs Boisonuealt and Schaffer. Dansack studied this clause, something few people probably would have done before signing up for the credit monitoring.

But that's not necessary anymore. Equifax now says the arbitration did not refer to legal issues over the breach. That’s good for people who really wanted to take issue to court and avoid arbitration. So if you think any of the effect of the breach on your or your family, rose to the level of a lawsuit, you can have your day in court. It's subtle, it is language you might dismiss but sometimes details matter.

— Ahead of three changes to what Equifax is offering consumers following its breach of 145 million consumer records, U.S. PIRG is urging consumers to get free credit freezes with Equifax by January 31st if they haven’t already. “Getting credit freezes at all three national credit bureaus is the best action consumers can take after the Equifax breach, whether they were affected by it or not,” said Mike Litt, Consumer Campaign Director with U.S.

TrustedID Premier: January 31st is the last day to sign up for TrustedID Premier, Equifax’s initial offer after the breach. It provides one year of free services such as credit monitoring. It doesn’t hurt to sign up for these services. However, you should know they are limited and, at best, only alert you to identity theft after it has occurred.Therefore, we also recommend you freeze your credit reports with all three national credit bureaus.

Equifax Credit Freeze: January 31st is also the last day Equifax will waive the fee it normally charges consumers to get credit freezes on their Equifax credit reports. We recommend that you take advantage of this option. What is a credit freeze, It is a commonsense tool that allows consumers to freeze access to their credit history and scores, denying thieves the ability to open any fake accounts in their names. Note: For complete protection, you’ll need to freeze your reports with the other two bureaus, too.