Posted by SceneR on June 30, 2008
One of the things that I learned during the years that I managed an office was that it’s important to make sure that tasks are delegated appropriately. I also learned that it’s important to make sure that you delegate tasks in an organized fashion so that no two staff members are doubling up on duties. Being organized in this way is what will keep the office running smoothly. Of course, no one ever told me this; it was something that I learned the hard way.
I was working in a fairly small office so I left a lot of the decision making up to the individual staff members on my team. At one point, we had a project that required us to cut a bunch of papers into different sizes and then to fold them for mailing to potential clients. I mentioned in a meeting that someone would need to purchase the right tools to get this job done. I wasn’t clear about who this should be or what should be purchased.
Several different staff members went into the petty cash drawer that week. By the end of the project, the office owned a business card cutter, two paper cutters and a paper folder. We didn’t need all of these things. It was a waste of time for staff to go out and buy them and it was a waste of money spent on unnecessary equipment. But it did make me learn my lesson!
Technorati Tags: business card cutter, paper cutters, paper folder
Posted by SceneR on June 26, 2008
One of the most important things that needs to be taken into consideration any time that there is going to be construction is the issue of safety. It is important to make sure that the construction workers are kept safe during the work. It is even more important to make sure that other people in the area, such as customers of a store that’s being renovated, are kept safe throughout the time that construction is taking place.
In order to keep things safe, it is important to make use of safety equipment that is designed specifically for this purpose. For example, you might want to put up a jersey barrier around the perimeter of the construction area so that people know which area to stay out of in order to be safe. If the construction is taking place in an area with a parking lot, you may want to use a temporary fence or a traffic barricade to keep cars out of harm’s way.
When we’re getting ready to have construction done, we’re often most excited about the work itself. We want to know when it will be complete so that our building can be ready for full use. However, we need to remember that safety and crowd control during the construction is the thing that’s going to be of primary concern.
Technorati Tags: jersey barrier, temporary fence, traffic barricade
Posted by TheScene on June 24, 2008
Reading product reviews for me is like having a crystal ball into the future - they let me know what to expect from a product. I tend to rely on them quite a bit when I am in the market to buy, so when I was in the market for a new office shredder, it came as no surprise that I would see what reviews I could dig up.
I don’t know if it was just me, but when I did do a search for paper shredder reviews, I didn’t come up with much. The few reviews that I did read seemed to lack the impartiality that I was looking for, so I decided that I would just do some myself.
I picked up one Destroyit shredder and a couple Dahle paper shredders that were of similar price to see what we thought. They both had a return policy that would allow for such testing and I made sure to ask the companies that I bought them from if their return policy would allow me to return them if I was not satisfied with their product.
The testing methodology that we used was to shred the similar amount of waste paper in each one to see how much waste was left. I guess it would be obvious that we would get the same weight out, but I wanted to see how fine the shredded paper that came out of the machine would be.
We will be testing the shredders over the next couple of weeks. We will be also looking for a place where we can recycle shredded paper - it seems to be the responsible thing to do.
Technorati Tags: Dahle paper shredders, Destroyit shredder, office shredder
Posted by SceneR on June 23, 2008
I had spent a number of years working in the office setting so it seemed natural to me to say yes when I was asked to move into a position as the manager of an office. I figured that this would allow me to get higher pay for the type of work that I was already doing. I had no idea what I was getting myself into!
I quickly learned that the office manager handles a great variety more tasks than the typical office staff member will handle. Additional duties for the office manager including handling issues with other staff, delegating tasks, taking responsibility for purchasing and servicing business equipment and acting as a liaison between office staff and head people at the office.
I hadn’t realized that so much of the job of an office manager would be to deal with the people who worked in the office. I didn’t mind the other parts of the job so much. For example, placing orders for office equipment was no big deal to me. But dealing with the headaches of unhappy staff members and trying to make sure that everyone else was doing their jobs was just too much for me. It wasn’t too long before I stepped down and started doing just my old job again!