Most people consider admin as a thankless job but its not.
Admin Team Leaders must learn to feel the employee’s need and assist them with the best possible options without waiting for requests or formalities within the available ambits of organizational policies.
Admin Managers should become a source of motivation for teams and employees instead of attrition.
Some admin managers consider themselves as administrators who only need to ensure organizational discipline through management of consequences. They love firing people or serving show cause notices. They feel if some one is late at work he cannot be spared for any excuse. These Admin Managers exhibit command through angry outbursts in public or meetings. They feel if employees are not kept at their toes they would not work properly.
Yet another category of admin managers depend more on other managers than there own self. They keep throwing the ball in the court of others. They avoid taking responsibilities. They often forget administration is diverse and continuous activity. They love appointing supervisors for each function and keep telling them that they are independent to deal with the problems. When someone brings more problem to them, they declare that someone as the biggest problem. Administration Managers belonging to this category try to stick close to their bosses and avoid getting to the workers/employees. They lack initiatives and discourage initiatives. The only reason that they survive in organizations is some unknown influence or their continuous yes sir policy.
Administration is not very difficult but still a bit intricate assignment. we need to understand few fundamentals that can make us better Administration Managers.
1. We must know more than all. Admin Managers must remain well informed about mental, moral and socio-psychological condition of each employee. They should never ignore a sad, an arrogant, an uneasy or an angry employee. Should learn to understand moods of people so they can watch over the actions and reactions in more amicable manner. They should establish a good network of informers to remain aware with the problems before they turn into crisis.
2. Rules are Rules and Rules should be same for all. Justice and merits are the two most important elements in administrative management. Most Administrative Managers fail when they don’t draw balance while conducting with employees and helping them with their administrative needs. They have to be dead honest and transparent in their day to day service management.
3. Don’t be a Crisis Managers. Most of the admin managers start looking like crisis managers. everything that they manage looks like a crisis. This is not fair. This is not right. It only happens when admin managers do not focus on statistical analysis, survey reports, feed back system, trends of expenses, trends of behaviours. They don’t work out and implement policies, standard operating mechanisms. Hence, the crisis would continue to grow bigger and heavier.
4. An administration manager should not facilitate his seniors only. This is biggest problem of the day. Our Seniors become our priority. Admin Managers must get to the last worker in the queue and listen to his problems. We need to understand that all members in a team matter no matter how big a team is. we should also understand that no administration manager can deliver the do without getting support and acknowledgment from his peers and his juniors as well. He should take problems as problems and not as individuals.
This is just one Chapter of what I perceive 100 Chapters of Administrative Management.
Written by Captain Zahid Faqir (Retired) DGM HSEQ at 560 MW Combined Cycle Power Plant in Karachi, Pakistan with experience of two decades in management of various functions. comments help me to write better so feel free to comment more. Read more at Zahid.faqir@linkedin.com