Being an effective office manager means first of all being able to show ingenuity in finding innovative solutions to each problem. A true Swiss Army knife within the company, he or she is required to intervene in several areas such as the Quality of Life at Work (QWL), human resources, administrative management, etc. The office manager is thus faced with numerous challenges every day.

The best option for success in assignments and to limit stress and frustration is to adopt an open mind and to always look for new methods and ideas to address the company's issues.

Discover here the innovative solutions to be implemented in three key areas of your organisation: QWL, recruitment and administrative management. 

1 - Promoting QWL through innovative practices

The Quality of Life at Work is one of the major challenges facing organisations. Improving it helps to meet the many challenges faced daily by the company: staff turnover, recruitment difficulties, reduced motivation, occupational illnesses, conflicts, etc.

The office manager therefore has an essential role to play in implementing measures to develop QWL. He/she can intervene at several levels:

• Office design: the work environment has a strong impact on the QWL and even the performance of employees. A study conducted by CSA for JLL in the Paris region shows the correlation between workspace and performance. According to this study, 1 in 4 employees consider that their environment allows them to work efficiently.

The office space must be designed to promote well-being and concentration, and limit stress and noise. This involves the ergonomics of workstations and the creation of spaces (meeting rooms, relaxation areas, etc.) that meet the need for isolation as well as the need to collaborate with the team. The presence of plants can also have a calming effect and encourage employee productivity. Lastly, lighting also has a major impact on well-being at work.

• Including employees in CSR and QWL processes: involving employees in these issues through workshops can also be an excellent way of finding innovative and concrete solutions. The collective intelligence and the different points of view expressed by the employees make it possible to avoid making hasty decisions and to tackle the problems in depth.
• Gamification: A concept that is gaining ground in companies, gamification consists of adapting (game) mechanisms to the company's fields of activity in the context of training, work situations, business applications, etc.
• Team-building: a classic but very effective method, team-building is an opportunity to thank employees and celebrate their successes while uniting the teams. There is no shortage of original ideas for activities, but they must still meet the needs of the employees and their interests.

2 - Improving recruitment processes through technology

If your company is struggling to recruit new employees or is looking for talent, technology is likely to be your best asset. You can :

• Activate all existing networks: add a recruitment section to the newsletter, set up a hashtag on LinkedIn, have a recruitment tab on the company's website, etc.
• Do social recruiting to discover other profiles and have access to a huge catalogue of CVs.
• Use a dedicated application to connect with future employees who are looking for a job from their smartphone.
• Using AI to scan profiles to scan profiles and find the most promising ones

3 - Digitalisation for optimal administrative management

Another point on which the office manager can intervene and propose innovative solutions is administrative management. Here again, there are many ways to make administrative management more fluid, efficient and cooperative. Digitalisation helps to considerably improve the company's performance in this area.

Thus, several solutions can be put in place:

• Collaborative suites: these are a set of applications that communicate with each other and allow employees to work simultaneously, share documents, send instant messages, etc. Google's G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 are among the most widely used collaborative suites.
• The recruitment management toolsIf your company needs to recruit people on a regular basis, the implementation of a recruitment software is essential. This way, your company will not miss out on talent while limiting time-consuming tasks.
• Management tools: If there is one area where digitalisation saves valuable time, it is administrative and financial management. For example, if you want to allow employees to work both on the company's premises and at home, SaaS software can be a good solution. If you want to be more efficient in managing supplier invoices, consider collaborative tools like Freedz.

Need an innovative solution for invoice management? Freedz is a collaborative platform that facilitates customer-supplier relations by simplifying the exchange of invoices in electronic form. Freedz is, among other things

• The dematerialisation of invoice collection.
• The centralisation and archiving of all invoices on a single platform and a search engine for easy access to the desired invoices, by supplier or by year.
• A real validation process.
• Better monitoring of expenditure.
• Simple transmission of information to the accountant, who can retrieve the documents directly from Freedz via his own account.

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