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Office Management

SOP: Standard Operating Procedures

They are applicable for any activityfrom how to make tea to how to manage a project. They are

also called Work Instructions. They are equivalent of a recipe of the activity.

First stepin office management: Identify all activitiesthat take place in the office on a repetitive or

a regular basis so that SOP can be developed for it. Hence, from how to set up an appointment to

how many holidays in a year to sick leave benefitsall come under SOPs.

Second Step: Make a FLOWCHART.

Stage 1: Input leads to Process leads to Output.

Stage 2: Output of Stage 1 is Input of Stage 2.

And so on for Sequential activities. Similarly, identify Parallel or Simultaneous Activities and create

the flowchart incorporating the same.

(Like PERT chart identifying CRITICAL activities)

Third Step: for every activity, input, process and output, identify the human resource involvedput

a name or person category to know who will give the input, who will do the processing and who will

receive the output.

Fourth Step: the eligibilityof the above persons must be known - identified and must be checked

against the required. In case of in-house processing person, skills, academic knowledge, experience

etc. may be prepared for every employee in the form of a competence matrix.

If the person falls short of requirement, then trainingmay be given. Trainers credentials must be

known and a list of possible trainers should be available. The trainer may be Internal or External.

The information to be given (syllabus) of the training should be available.

Fifth step: to ensure that information received, processed and output created is CORRECT and

COMPLETE, checklists and formats are used. Who will do the filling in of the checklists and which

formats are to be used must be mentioned in the SOP.

Sixth step: Now the actual Input-Process-Output can begin. The actual process of DOING the work

and ensuring that the required pre- requisites have been adequately fulfilled must be recordedas

proof.

Seventh step: these recordsmust be stored in such a way that they are available when required i.e.

they should be traceable and legible. The storage methodsoft and hard copy and, retention

period should be mentioned in SOP.

Eighth step: based on retention period, the disposal of recordsas mentioned in the SOP must be

done to ensure that there is no clutter.

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Some broad activities for which SOPs may be developed are:

1. Client Interaction: initial inputs, MoM reports, Site visit reports etc. Change, variation orders

2. Contractor Interaction: prequalification process, selection process, evaluation process,

periodic check of site work, bill check process

3.

Internal interaction: actual drawing preparation, delegation of work in-house, administrativeprocesses like agreement with clients, billing, HR related processes - interviews of

candidates, termination etc.

4. External interaction: new suppliers & technologies, seminars, exhibitions etc.

5. Government interaction: compliance and remittances of all tax related activities etc. TDS,

service tax etc.