The Hidden Cost of an “Office Manager”

by Steve Gifford

Your Office Manager seems like a cheap solution to staffing your small business. After all, she is your reception desk, your customer service department, facilities maintenance, HR, employee benefits recruiting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll department all wrapped up in one! She’s not very expensive, and when you need something new done, she just does it.

Think about the actual “business” side of your business, though. You don’t assemble your own circuit boards, because other companies have figured out how to do that well, and cheaper than you ever could. Circuit boards aren’t what you do, so you leave them to the experts. Same with creating lenses — glass is a hard skill to master, and isn’t your core business, so you ask others to do it.

On your shop floor, you’ve already figured it out: You are only competitive if you focus on what your company makes best, and leaves the other parts of the process up to suppliers who do their part best. If you tried to make an entire finished product from raw materials under your own roof, you’d be out of business pretty fast. So, why are you doing that in your office?

Your Office Manager may be great, but she’s not an expert at everything she does. And by not having the best in each of those disciplines, you are costing yourself money.

Call OEM for a complimentary consultation. We’ll let you know how bringing in our expertise in workforce management can save your company money.