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“The office personnel refers to all the employees of the office comprising the
chief, sectional chiefs and assistants who jointly work for the attainment of the
organizational goals."- Beach

So, we can conclude that the office personnel are those manpower having required
skill, knowledge, experience and qualification to achieve the organizational goal.
Office chief, sectional chiefs and subordinates are common form of office personnel
who work at different levels for the sake of the organization.

Types of office personnel

The Office Manager /Chief
The office manager is a person who does planning, organizing, staffing, directing and
controlling of the various office activities performed to accomplish the objectives of
a business enterprise. He or she is the officer-in-charge under whose guidance the
office personnel performs the various office duties. The office manager is vested with
authority and he or she is also responsible for all that is done at the office.
In recent times, the job of office manager has become much more challenging and
dynamic because of the changing pattern of society as a whole. The modern office
is not what it used to be in the good old days when the office personnel used to
sit in the room filled with heaps of paper and files and worked till late evening.
The changing pattern of the office is such that most of the paper or clerical work
is performed with the help of sophisticated machines like the computers and/or
word- processors. The methods of letter-writing, mail-handling, filing, indexing, etc.,
have changed considerably and the communication systems have been modernized.
Many new systems have been developed, like the management information system,
systems analysis, data processing, etc. Time has become the most valuable factor for
all sorts of business and efficiency is required to handle the modern situation. Most
of the manual devices have been replaced by machines. Hence, the main job of the
modern office manager is confined to planning the resources and organizing them
in an efficient manner so that with great speed information is obtained or analyzed
or passed on to others. The success of modern office manager lies in meeting the
challenges by developing fast and sound systems of management information,
reducing the amount of unnecessary paperwork, developing the form of information,
handling automated offices, motivating the clerical staff properly and finding out the
new methods of working in order to cope up with the fast pace of progress.

Functions of an office manger
The functions to be performed by an office manager largely depend upon the size and
volume of business which is required to be undertaken and the system of information
adopted by the enterprise. Basically, the office manager is required to handle all
aspects of office work right from planning the office accommodation and layout,

10 GREEN – Office Practice and Accounting 9