What is Office Administration?

As opposed to sales and marketing, and customer relations, office administration is known as a back-office function of an organisation. Those who are engaged in it are responsible for providing the company with the groundwork for its day-to-day functions. These activities include everything from finance, record keeping, transportation, human resources, managing physical assets, and logistical support.

Many organisations, however, have set up different departments for many of the above functions and the office administrations department mainly handles transportation, record keeping, building and grounds maintenance, cleaning services, supplies management and managing administrative staff.

What do typical office administrative jobs in Sri Lanka entail?

Typical office administrative jobs in Sri Lanka are based on the coordination of office activities and operations. Having timelines and guidelines for operations in place is a key task of an office administrator. This ensures smooth and efficient running of operations.

Another important activity of an office manager is ensuring compliance. In the business world, compliance means adhering to various laws, regulations, rules and company policies. The part of an office administrative job in Sri Lanka would also entail setting up a framework for such compliance.

Office administration department of organisations is made up of an office administrator or office manager and followed by administrative staff or administrative assistants. Administrative assistants mean those who provide support to the people of the organisation. These are the people you see running around the company helping others, giving a hand whenever and wherever they are needed. They are an integral part of a company and are relied on by everyone. It is up to the office administrator to manage the administrative staff.

Making sure that the upper management is equipped to handle important decision making is also an important job of office administration. Managing their agendas, making sure that the structure and the framework for their activities are well in place is paramount for the smooth running of a company.

Creating procedures and policies for the organisation is another task of office administration. There are important and regulatory policies such as fire and safety and workplace harassment should be set up so that everyone knows the procedure to follow when needed.

Renting/leasing or purchasing or premises, vehicles, machinery and other assets forms a large part of an office administrator’s job. Hand in hand with this goes the maintenance of such assets. Even everyday tasks that one might consider mundane such as providing tea for employers is up to the office administration department of an organisation.

What are the requirements for office administration jobs in Sri Lanka?

Administrators at the root of things are managers because what they do is manage an office. Hence, they should be able to think on their feet, be good decision makers and be good multi-taskers. It is also important to be a good team player as you would be working with a large number of people across an organisation. In addition, being friendly and supportive should come naturally because your primary job will be helping people.

Apart from that, it would never hurt to have pursued studies related to office administration. In Sri Lanka, institutions such as the SLIDA, NIMB, IPM and Aquinas all provide courses related to office administration and secretarial work. There are also online courses you could follow at your own convenience.