Why Office Managers Need a Ticketing System

“I’m suffocating in this conference room, can you turn down the heat?”

“We’re out of coffee.”

“I need to order catering for a client meeting.”

“We need a venue for our employee happy hour."

As an office manager, employee requests come in from all departments, from the Sales team to the CEO. Organizing, prioritizing, and tracking these requests is one of the most challenging aspects of an office manager’s job, especially when they pile up on top of an already long to-do list.

Other office teams that manage requests, like engineering, customer support, and IT, all benefit from specially-designed ticketing systems such as Jira and Zendesk. They enable them to collect, streamline, assign, communicate about, and document the requests they receive. However, these platforms were built specifically to address the needs of these teams.

In an attempt to tame the chaos of these daily requests, office managers have either had to create their own organization system using spreadsheets, calendar reminders, post-it notes, or by hacking existing ticketing software for their own purposes. But regardless of the organization system, there were no formal channels that enabled employees to submit their requests, leaving office managers scrambling to collect and document them.

As office operations increase in complexity, office managers need tools that are specifically designed to help them manage a modern, technology-powered office and better meet employee expectations around comfort, perks, and benefits in the office.

When we launched Managed by Q four years ago, we set out to make the lives of office management teams easier. While we have always been focused on providing high-quality facilities services, we were aware of this issue and wanted to try to address it using our technology at the time.

We decided to install an iPad displaying an early version of the Q dashboard in our clients’ offices. Employees could submit requests directly to Q if a light bulb needed changing, the paper towels ran out, or the dishwasher was clogged. By empowering employees to communicate with us directly about office needs we hoped to ease the burden on office managers.

But we overlooked a crucial part of the process: the office manager is responsible for the maintenance and supplies budget, prioritizing projects, and managing relationships with service providers. To better manage the employee requests coming in, many office managers moved the iPads to their desk…or had them mounted out of the way in supply closets. Needless to say, this was not the solution office managers were looking for––and the iPads did not last long.

Shortly after testing an internal Slack command for employee requests in our New York office, we learned about a French company that had been working on a more elegant solution to this problem. Hivy software includes a Slack-integrated dashboard that enables office and IT teams to collect employee requests, manage projects, assign tasks, and notify employees when their requests have been completed.

By capturing, organizing, and tracking employee requests, Hivy helps office managers streamline their workflow, prioritize their tasks, and better shape workplace culture and operations. With organized data, office managers can better understand what employees need and have a tangible record to show what they have accomplished.

Hivy enables employees to easily report anything that’s broken, amiss, or running low at the office and empowers office managers to prioritize and fulfill those requests. Even the most diligent office manager and well-resourced office team needs support.

For example, since we started using Hivy at Managed by Q’s headquarters in New York, the most popular requests our Office Manager Layna has received have been:

- Adjusting the office temperature

- Help finding a conference room when none are available

- Catering and event requests

Layna also found that Managed by Q employees care deeply about the conditions of the office and have many ideas for workspace improvements and employee events. She also was alerted to maintenance issues she had not known about, such as a constantly overflowing trash can in the men’s bathroom. Hivy has enabled Managed by Q employees to feel more comfortable requesting what they need, and our office team to address these requests in an organized, transparent manner.

Hivy enables office managers and their teams to work together towards a common goal: creating a great place to work. And, thankfully, it’s more accessible than an iPad in the broom closet. Hivy, which is now referred to as Task Management, is now accessible through the Managed by Q dashboard.

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