What skills does an Office Manager need?
With extensive office management experience over the years, I have hired and managed multiple office support staff and I'm now training office managers as part of the Black & White Office Consultancy offering. So, you [...]
Why Do a Risk Assessment and How Do I Start?
Why do a risk assessment? A number of us Office Managers will likely have heard of a risk assessment before now; but do we know exactly what it is, why we need to do it [...]
Guest blog: Would Opening International Offices Benefit Your Recruitment Of Talent?
For a business, the decision to open an international office can never be taken lightly. It’s still the opinion of many business owners that expansion is necessary for growth. In fact, a 2016 survey by [...]
Guest Blog: Get Data Protection Right
OK, that’s not what it stands for, but the General Data Protection Regulations are here to stay, and it’s imperative that we get it right. It seemed to be on everyone’s lips in the run [...]
How to Make the Most of The Office Management Portal
We recently changed the way in which The Office Management Portal (the OMP) works and how we provide access to our Members - the great news is that it is now free* for anyone to [...]
Guest Blog: Security In The Workplace
One of the most important factors I come across as an Office Manager, that quite often gets overlooked is SECURITY! When running a business one of the key requirements is to ensure it is secure. [...]
The Magic Move
It’s always something I personally find quite humorous when carrying out office moves or even an internal shuffle; that the business people comment on the Monday and say “it’s like magic, I leave Friday night [...]
How Green is Your Office?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own impact on the planet both at home and in the business I run, as well as clients and their offices that I support. And just how [...]
Fool Proof Office Fit-Outs
It's that moment most Office Managers dread; learning that you have to organise and manage a re-fit of your existing office. Or maybe it’s an office relocation coupled with the inevitable need of managing or [...]
Guest Blog: Essentials That Need To Be Included In Your Employee Handbook
In order to build a good working relationship that creates success for your business, employees and employers should be able to trust each other. One handy way this can be made possible is through an [...]
Is The Indoor Air Quality In Your Workplace Affecting Your Health?
In a standard 9-5 weekday working job, you spend roughly 35 hours a week in your working environment. That’s a rather long time when you think about it! We spend the majority of our time [...]
Three Simple Ways To Make Your Office More Efficient
There are many different ways in which an office manager's skills can have an impact on how efficiently an office runs. But how can you ensure things are streamlined with very little input from you? [...]
Guest Blog: Workplace Wellbeing
In Great Britain, 28 million working days are lost through work-related ill health, of which stress and related mental health issues account for at least half (according to stats released by the Health and Safety Executive, HSE). The [...]
The Global Office Manager
The Global Office Manager We all generally know that office and facilities management roles vary an awful lot, and that within these roles there are tonnes of responsibilities and remits you are often in charge [...]
Guest Blog: Career Progression at an SME
An SME is defined as a company with fewer than 250 employees, and turnover typically less than £50m. An awful lot of businesses fall into this category, but around two-thirds of my career to date [...]
Guest Blog: Events – How to Keep Your No-Shows Down
One of the questions I frequently get asked is how you prevent guests from not turning up to your event, or 'no-shows' as we call them in the industry. If you've ever planned an event, no matter how [...]
What I’ve Learnt About Business
This is a bit of a different blog to my others, which are mostly about office management and the highs, lows and Hail Mary’s that come up along the way. This blog is specifically about [...]
The Staff Soap Survey And What it Taught Me About Engaging Your Employees
I’ve briefly mentioned in a previous blog about a “soap survey” – yes you read that right! A survey about soap scents (or would you call it flavours, I’m never sure…) anyway, it was one [...]
Perfectionism and the Office Manager
When I meet with office managers (or variations of the role such as facilities managers, office administrators etc.) there’s an all too common sense of perfection that comes through, and a pressure to make things [...]
Through the eyes of an office manager
I often think about how an office manager differs from the other employees and in particular, what makes them good at what they do. To me, being in office management takes a certain type of [...]
Six simple steps to consider in your procurement process
When it comes to your procurement process - procuring goods, services and outsourced support it’s really, really important to benchmark the vendors and their products (if applicable). Reviewing the costs or pricing within your procurement [...]
My Journey to The Portal
Last week, The Office Management Portal (finally) went LIVE! And I wanted to share a blog about my journey in getting the initial idea off the ground and turning that into a platform that is [...]
Christmas in the Office
I’ve found Christmas is always a funny time of year in the office for a few reasons. One, because it flies by so fast and before you know it the Christmas tree you paid some [...]
Evacuation Drills – does anyone actually take them seriously?
During my time as an Office Manager, I’ve seen (oddly) many types of evacuation drills and scenarios from fires or false alarms which are pretty typical to flooding (from a ceiling!). It’s probably pretty obvious [...]
Jack of all… master of SOME!
As an Office Manager (or in a similar or mixed role) you’ll be aware that there are many areas of responsibility, and I’ve talked about it a few times now in previous blogs. I like [...]
The isolated Office Manager
One of the things I wanted to write about when I started blogging was isolation, which is felt by a number of people in office management-type roles. It's something I've personally had experience of in [...]
The new joiner process – making first impressions count
Ever wonder what you'd think if you were invited to join a friend at their place for dinner, the date and time are set and you turn up promptly, on the day to find they've [...]
9 Common Office Management Mistakes
If you’re in charge of a successful business, it’s likely you’ll be focused on the work you do, rather than keeping a strict eye on your day-to-day office operations or slight office management mistakes. But [...]
Desk Assessments – make your workspace work for you!
The demanding world of work often requires a lot of time sat at a desk, hunched over a computer day in, day out (not to mention all that catching up with last-minute project work at [...]