Training Course

Description

Office Management (OM)

OM comprises of two words i.e. Office and Management. The dictionary meaning of ‘Office’ is a place where the business is carried out. Kapur, 2018 depicts office as a nervous system of every operation of an organisation. ‘Management’ comes from French word ‘manège’ meaning to guide (Denyer, 1959). Figure 1 depicts the essence of OM. The elements of OM are personnel, means, environment and purpose (Ghosh, 1983). Denyer, 1959 describes OM as the best use of personnel by utilizing most appropriate means, in a most conducive & suitable environment to achieve a specified purpose. OM encompasses all the functions of general management i.e. planning, organizing, staffing, directing, communicating, coordinating, controlling and motivating (Chopra & Gauri, 2015 and Hicks & Place, 1962).OM is a very important discipline, as well as competency for every organisation to achieve the desired outcome in a most efficient and effective manner. For government officials, OM competency is vital to ensure public service delivery in accordance with the ‘Felt Need’ of citizens.

OM is a vast discipline and OM competencies must embrace multitude of domains. Batty, 1972 describes centralization versus decentralization, span of control, delegation, management information etc as the broader issues of OM. Chopra & Gauri, 2015 describes basic functions of OM as receiving, recording, arranging and giving information. Figure 2 describes OM as a system which comprises of varied discipline of management highlighting their inter dependence.

Aim

The aim of this paper is to bring out the importance of OM and its relevance in future CBTs to enhance functional efficiency and effectiveness to ensure citizen centric governance.

Scope

OM as a discipline is vital for various types of organisations/office e.g. Government, Corporate Sector, Legal, Medical etc. The paper examines the application of OM for the government organisations only. OM is a vast discipline covering the routine functional aspects to operations and strategy formulation. The paper covers the OM at conceptual level and its relevance in future CBTs to enhance functional efficiency and effectiveness of governance.

Conceptual Background

OM is essential for efficient and effective implementation of government policies and delivery of public services. It has evolved considerably during the recent years due to advent of technology and economic growth. Therefore, OM is a vital competency for public servants or government officials to ensure the following:-

1. To enable all civil servants to discharge their responsibilities to the society in an efficient and effective manner.
2. To execute the ‘Strategy for New India @ 75’ as enunciated by Niti Aayog in accordance with the clarion call of Hon’ble Prime Minister to establish a New India by 2022.
3. To formulate policies in a competent manner, plan the operations intelligently, monitor the execution pro-actively, evaluate the outcomes without any kind of delay to determine the effectiveness of the plans.
4. To implement all the major functions and activities of various ministries and departments in a well-organized and coordinated manner without any time and cost overruns.

Discussion

Certain Best Practices in OM

The advent of modern technologies and gadgets has transformed the face of Modern Office. Chopra & Gauri, 2015 describes that ‘Paperless Office’, ‘Global Office’, ‘Mobile Office’, and ‘Office in Your Pocket’ are very much relevant today. COVID pandemic has extended the office space to ‘Work from Home’ domain. With increased pressure on ensuring fiscal discipline, every organisation is striving to ensure lean office. Tapping & Shuker (2003) suggests basic methods for implementing lean office by applying value stream management. Lewis et. al., 1998 models the administrative office as a closed queuing network to determine number of workers for related tasks and discusses the office arrangement to optimize productivity & equity within the office, and the optimal size of an office. Therefore, the nerve centers i.e. offices for ensuring citizen centric governance are transforming at rapid pace. It calls for dynamism in imbibing OM competency.

Personnel are the most complex element of OM and should be the centre of gravity for developing OM competency. Xu, 2015 suggests improvements in the OM by strengthening the service consciousness, professional skills, mastering the rules and regulations, investing on staff training etc. Khan, 2016 presents a case that personnel must be given autonomy at work place to complete their tasks.   It addresses the self-actualization needs. Personnel should be lead and not managed. White, 2019 highlights need of unblocking communications to keep personnel engaged at work place. The leaders in various government offices must create reservoir of trust to align the values of all officials which are responsive towards public service delivery.

An Insight into Existing Training on OM

Institute of Secretariat Training and Management (ISTM) functions as a capacity building institution to the government and support institutions. Training material of ISTM was studied

to see the contents of various training programmes so as to gain an insight into the contents of existing training in OM domain. Appendices A & B give the various facets of OM for tainting of IAS Officers and Deputy Secretaries / Directors and a summary is depicted at Figure 4. There is a need to expand the scope in future CBTs for OMs to include exploitations of latest technological developments, decision making tools & techniques, HRM skills etc to enhance productivity in delivery of public services.

Challenges pertaining to OM in Governance

Challenges in government offices that relate to OM are given in Figure 5 and also enumerated below:-

1. Bureaucratic and rigid set-up with an obsession to follow the rules. The officials become prisoners of procedures with a negative mind set. Bold execution and positive interpretation of rules and regulations is missing.
2. Outcome oriented and proactive approach is lacking.
3. Decision making follows the chain of command and there is a tendency to push the files up through various levels, so as to keep the higher ups on board. There are several levels which are redundant and do not contribute to the decision making process. There is a high tolerance level towards slow and centralized decision making.
4. There is a weak integration and coordination a large number of Ministries and Departments. There is little or no horizontal cooperation and collaborative approach is deficient.
5. Guarded and slow communication. Information sharing i.e. downward and horizontal communication is lacking.
6. The link between policy making and its implementation is missing. Feedback system also needs improvement.
7. The existing system is efficient only to address routine and previously encountered issues for which rules have already been established. There are challenges in addressing in novel and dynamic issues by following a creative approach.
8. Low tolerance for risk taking and there is general tendency for avoidance of conflict.
9. There is resistance of bureaucracy to lateral entry officials and specialization leads to sub-unit conflicts.
10. Sarkari mindset and government officials prefer to function in one’s comfort zone. There is a need of attitudinal shaping of government officials by training, empowering, engaging, encouraging confidence building, etc.
11. Task anomalies in certain offices. Shared responsibility dilutes the individual responsibility.
12. Short-term focus and long-term perspective is missing.
13. Personality driven system and individual orientation scores over team orientation.
14. Individual accountability is lacking. There is ‘No One to Blame’ for delay and inefficient execution.
15. There is a stiff resistance to change. The adoption of technological solutions to improve means and processes of OM is very slow.
16. Lack of Monitoring due to over commitment with mundane issues. It must be kept in mind, whatever is monitored; is implemented sooner or with some delay.
17. Outdated Data Management & Management Information System. The institutional knowledge is not preserved.
18. Highly politicized environment leads to misplaced priorities and compromise in following the self-consciousness.

Take Away Points

Prognosis

It is evident that OM is a key competency to control the nerve centre of effectual governance and improve productivity. There are lots of reforms undertaken in the recent years to improve OM. Some of the initiatives are self attestation of documents, doing away with interviews for selection of Group B (non- gazette) & Group C posts, lateral entry at senior level. 3600 feedback for senior appointments, ensuring synergy between Additional Secretaries and of central government departments and with administrative sub-divisions in the field, National Recruitment Agency (NRA) etc. 58 ministries and departments have reviewed their channel of submission of files to four levels to speed up decision making process. To facilitate inter ministerial and departmental coordination E-Office Version 7.0 has been rolled out which will be implemented by all 84 ministries and departments by Nov 2021 (Sharma, 2021). Development of CBT under Mission Karamyogi is also a step in the right direction. A 3600 approach to sharpen the OM competency will certainly enhance productivity and public service delivery.

Way Ahead

There is a need to address the challenges enumerated above, adoption of technological developments and best practices, revising the training on OM in future CBT module etc. Figure 6 summarizes the way head for improving OM competency in future CBT.

Conclusion

This paper makes an endeavour to highlight the importance of OM and its relevance in future CBTs to enhance ‘Productivity”. A whole hearted, contextualized and outcome oriented conduct of online and personalized training is required to sharpen OM skills and shape the attitudes of various government officials.