When to Hire An Office Manager: Everything You Need to Know

Scaling your business is exciting, but it can come with growing pains. Should you raise pricing? Should you offer more services or products? Do you need more employees, which would mean a bigger office building?

As your company grows, a few thoughts linger: when to hire an office manager or if hiring an office manager is even the right choice for your business.

There is no cut-and-dry answer of when to hire an office manager because this depends heavily on your specific business and how it’s structured. That being said, some general guidelines are a good place to figure out whether this new hire is the answer to the shortfalls of your day-to-day operations.

What Exactly Does an Office Manager Do?

Office managers have diverse job descriptions depending on where they work and the needs of your business. The most significant part of their job is administrative work, which requires excellent organization and keeps your office running smoothly. However, an office manager should also gel with your company culture and get along with staff members.

Though job descriptions for qualified candidates may vary, figuring out when to hire an office manager is easier by knowing exactly what they do. A good office manager has the knowledge and experience to:

• Ordering office supplies (including amazing office snacks!)
• Manage schedules
• Organize travel and per diems
• Set up employee schedules
• Communicate with human resources and other departments

• Enforce office policies
• Delegate tasks
• Create effective filing systems to streamline workflow
• Invoicing
• Decorate the office space for a more positive work environment, seasonally or otherwise
• Organize events, such as happy hours or Christmas parties
• Possess soft skills, such as problem-solving, time management, and critical thinking
• Make and take phone calls for stakeholders, vendors, and others
• Data entry
• Act as an office administrator
• Familiarity with office management software

In many cases, the office manager role will take the tasks off your hands and those of other team members who need to focus on other things, freeing up everyone to do more without letting anything fall through the cracks.

When To Hire an Office Manager: 4 Telltale Signs

As mentioned earlier, no specific metric dictates the need for an office manager; it’s often different for every business owner or startup. However, four telltale signs may indicate when to hire an office manager. Consider getting that job posting together soon if you notice one or more of these signs.

1. You’ve Got Executives or Key Players Drowning in Administrative Tasks

Executives or other high-performing, specialized key players need to focus on critical business tasks. All their energy and productivity should go toward the work that keeps the business afloat, whether decision-making, sales, onboarding new employees, or anything else crucial to the company's success.

Drowning in administrative tasks is a pitfall of many companies, and a lack of organizational skills can bog down employees across all departments — even if it’s just twenty minutes of work a day.

Sometimes, administrative tasks are far too important to hand off to entry-level workers, but they can create a bottleneck for more experienced staff members. Creating an employee schedule, for example, or even organizing the details of essential business trips are integral parts of a business. However, they’re not ideal tasks for upper-level or mid-tier employees.

If this happens constantly, you’ve already answered the question of when to hire an office manager — now. This is particularly true if tasks overlap or result in wasted resources (including time!) in any way. As a rule of thumb, no one should be spending more than 10% of their time on admin work unless it’s the main focus of their job.

2. You’re Bringing On A Batch of New Employees

The bigger the business grows, the more chaos ensues. This is true even for an office that’s essentially a well-oiled machine with the most reliable employees.

Dividing up work between a few key players can work at first, but the more employees, clients, and work you have, the more that’s at stake.

Scaling in size is typically a sign that it may be time for an office manager. The next time you’re considering hiring a new batch of employees (even if it’s just two or more), this may be the answer of when to hire an office manager. They can help you keep it all straight.

3. There’s Internal Disorganization

There will be a point where your business scales so much that key admin tasks are starting to slip if they’re not relegated to a single person. Sometimes, this happens because people aren’t sure exactly who should be doing that work or are so swamped that it’s being done inconsistently.

Internal disorganization can sink a ship faster than you might think, so if this is something you’re running into, you need to bring someone on ASAP to fix it because it’s definitely a full-time job at that point.

4. You Can Afford One

This is an important criterion — if you can afford to hire an office manager, that’s when to hire an office manager.

Remember that office managers will not just cost you an extra salary for administration work but make the rest of your office more productive, too. Their presence will help your money-making team generate more revenue, but because their position won’t directly lead to an increase in profit otherwise, having the extra room in the budget for around $35,000-50,000 per year (plus benefits) is important.

When To Hire an Office Manager: Traits To Look For

Whenever you decide that you’re ready for an office manager, it’s essential to ensure that you hire the right person for the job. This is a specialized job in its own right, so you’ll need to hire someone with certain qualities.‍

These are the traits we recommend looking for when hiring an office manager:

• Naturally organized with strong attention to detail. Whether they’re managing subscriptions to office supplies or an employee’s business trip, they need to have an innate sense of organization so that every detail is addressed.
• Flexibility. The office manager is taking on a million tasks that no one else in the office has the bandwidth to handle, so it can be a little chaotic. Someone who can be flexible as they’re handling all this will be a better fit than someone who insists on a strict routine.
• Good with people. Office managers are solving many problems for many people, so they need to be good with people and genuinely like interacting with others.
• Strong communication skills. There’s so much for office managers to handle, and communicating what they need and meeting everyone else's needs is important.  

‍Always ensure they have the personality and inherent traits to do the job well; experience alone isn’t always a good reason to hire someone.

Don’t Be Afraid To Hire Quality Help

Office managers will significantly increase your company's productivity by making everyone else’s job easier. More gets done, and nothing is slipping between the cracks. This is all excellent news for any corporation and can lead to a direct increase in revenue.

Not every business necessarily needs an office manager, particularly if they’re still getting started. You'll know once you need one, though, and these four signs will be a good reminder.

Internal disorganization can sink a ship faster than you m