6 Benefits of Using a Productivity Tool Built for Office Managers

“Today is the day I’m FINALLY going to reorganize the supply closet,” you said to yourself as you walked through the door to the office. You’ve blocked off time on your calendar. You answered all of your emails last night.

But as you approach your desk, what do you see? A Post-It note stuck to your computer screen: “We’re out of yogurt!” Before you can take a seat, you feel your phone vibrate—Meg from Accounting is Slacking you. “Hey! Do we have any envelopes? I can’t find any...” Now an email notification pops up from your boss, “I think we may need to buy fire extinguishers for city compliance. Could you look into this? Thanks.” John is approaching your desk… is he going to ask for another charger? Doesn’t he know by now that’s an IT request?

The clock just struck 9 a.m. and the plans you made for the day have already been shot. Do you take care of these items now? More requests are certainly going to come through if you sit down and start to work. How do you prioritize? Maybe you should just message everyone separately and let them know you’re working on their request?

The answer to these questions, and the way to get your work done effectively, is with Managed by Q’s Employee Helpdesk. Built specifically for people in office management roles, it’s designed to increase productivity for workplace teams and streamline their work.

1. Work in one system

Requests from coworkers come in constantly from different channels: emails, Slack messages, Post-it notes unceremoniously stuck to your computer screen, and even texts. You spend so much time collecting these requests, communicating that they’re in progress, organizing and prioritizing them—all before you can do the actual work.

With Employee Helpdesk, all requests from your coworkers are made through either a Slack command or their employee dashboard and sent to a single place—your Managed by Q dashboard. This means you never have to rely on the notes you scribbled down, random messages, or remembering that Dave asked you to order more popcorn in passing. Your coworkers have one way to ping you. Everything is in a single, unified place—and that’s just the beginning.

2. No follow up necessary

Once a request is submitted, it automatically shows up on your dashboard as a task. From there, you can address it however you see fit. Let’s say Dave needs his popcorn and you know it’s on the way. Add a message to the task, “Popcorn is ordered and should arrive today!” and mark the task as Completed—Employee Helpdesk will send Dave your message and let him know his request is taken care of. You don’t have to send a follow-up email or go back into Slack to give updates.

You can also create custom request forms so you don’t have to ask someone for more information. If a coworker is putting in a request for you to book a flight, they’ll be prompted with a preset form you’ve made. They’ll fill out dates, their Delta Skymiles number, passport info, DOB—whatever you need. You’ll never have to chase down your coworker for details again.

3. Delegate automatically

It’s difficult to educate your coworkers on the nuances of your job. Sure you’ve held training sessions, sent reminder emails, and included all this info in an employee handbook, yet you still get questions about laptops—which is under the purview of the IT department.

Employee Helpdesk allows you to assign requests to different members of your team. You can set a rule in Employee Helpdesk that any tech-related query automatically goes to IT.  If someone submits a request for benefits information, assign the task over to the HR manager, no sweat. You won’t spend any more time doing work that isn’t, well, yours.

4. Plan ahead

Employee Helpdesk isn’t just a place to field requests. You can proactively add things you’re working on to the dashboard. It keeps track of everything like ‘Call the building super’ or ‘Rearrange conference room 2.’  Having your planned work live alongside the requests that come through means anything and everything is central, trackable, organized.

You’re also able to create recurring tasks. If you order bagels every Friday afternoon to be delivered Monday morning, mark the task as recurring and Employee Helpdesk will remind you. This set-it-and-forget function is a huge timesaver and anxiety reducer.

5. Reference the past

Once you’ve finished a task and marked it as ‘Completed’ (and let out a sigh of relief), the item will disappear—but not forever. Tasks in your Completed list are archived automatically (you choose the cadence) and stored in a searchable repository, meaning you can always reference your work. Planning the holiday party? Go back to the archives and retrieve your checklist so you don’t have to start from scratch. Going to be out of the office for vacation? Look back on all the tasks you completed the past few weeks and easily recreate and assign them to the coworker who’s covering for you. You won’t have to wrack your brain for all that needs to be done or worry that you forgot an important piece of information.

6. Measure your impact

Creating performance metrics as an office manager is difficult. What does success look like in terms of numbers? Employee Helpdesk tracks performance metrics for you. The reporting tab gives you valuable data like how many requests you’ve responded to and how many tasks you’ve completed in whatever time frame you choose.

You can also see trends about the office. If you notice a lot of people requesting standing desks, maybe it’s time to implement the health initiative you’ve been thinking about. Perhaps the number of snack requests went up. Maybe it’s time to change the cadence of the food delivery.

You can leverage this smart data about your job to set goals, create accurate budgets, and prove with confidence that you deserve a raise.

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