Job description largely refers to the official documentation of an employee’s roles and responsibilities at the workplace. The following section of the paper describes the job description of a General Manager and Secretary to the General Manager in a small Plastic Products Factory that is yet to be established.
The General Manager
The factory’s General Manager should play all the core administrative roles. Some of these roles include leading the organization, coordinating operations on a day-to-day basis, controlling both human and capital resources, organizing activities, and planning (Hobson, Strupeck, and Szostek 8). The General Manager is the driving force of an organization because he offers much-needed leadership.
Currently, the main administrative functions include:
- Setting goals and objectives (planning);
- Analyzing emerging situations (identifying the problems);
- Solving problems;
- Organizing and allocating resources (financial and technological resources and people);
- Communicating, directing and motivating the entire workforce and other stakeholders (hence, he offers leadership);
- Negotiating contracts on behalf of an organization ;
- Formulating and making decisions in a prompt and accurate manner;
- Measuring and evaluating organizational success (or exercising control).
Defining a General Manager’s roles
Hence, the job description of a manager can be condensed into the following key areas:
- Exercising control
- Offering leadership
- Organizing resources
- Executing planning
Planning
Defining the company’s future by setting goals, how the goals will be achieved, and the general purposes and objectives. Planning involves determining the presence of what is expected for the future of the organization, involving what decisions should be taken so that the goals and purposes are achieved (Hurtado, Mukherji, and Mukherji 270).
Organizing
A manager facilitates the process of organizing any set of resources in a framework that promotes the realization of goals. The organizational process results in the ordering of parts of a whole, or the division of a whole into parts ordered.
Leading
This involves influencing people to work on a common goal. A manager should set real targets to be achieved within a given timeline. He/she is also expected to define responsibilities for each employee, understand individual core competencies, and positively influence people so that the planned objectives are achieved. The key to this is utilizing affection when interacting with employees and the larger workplace environment. In management, it may not be enough to be a good person. A manager is born to win every emerging challenge at the workplace. This victory is related to the constant search for opportunities coupled with the courage to mobilize and role before colleagues and the rest of the workforce (Jacobson, Trojanowski and Dewa 206)
Control
After proper planning of an organization and leading major successful changes, a manager should develop accompanying activities in order to ensure the implementation of every policy and correcting possible deviations.
A manager should operate within the following principles:
- Know how to use principles, technical and administrative tools;
- Understanding and solve problems;
- Dealing with people humanly, communicating effectively, negotiating deals, leading changes, facilitating cooperation, and resolving conflicts.
- Having a systemic and comprehensive view of organizational structure;
- Be proactive, bold and creative;
- Being a good leader;
- Managing with responsibility and professionalism.
In charge of the financial mission and vision of an organization:
- Plan, organize, and supervise the activities of the general operations in order to ensure that all reports and records are made in accordance with the management principles and relevant legislation and standards at the right time while adhering to rules and procedures established by the company.
- Supervises the activities of various departments such as accounting in order to ensure that all reports and records are made in accordance with the management principles. The general manager also supervises the preparation of monthly management appraisal records and ensures that they properly reflect the economic and financial situation of the company.
- Analyze financial information and oversee the preparation of reports (and any other vital company records) containing information and also ensure that the interpretations of results and changes that occurred in the period are clearly reflected in the final management reports.
- Supervise fiscal bookkeeping activities and the monthly calculation of income tax, in order to ensure that all taxes due are calculated and collected according to the law, including compliance with ancillary obligations.
- Oversee the preparation of a number of financial records such as annual Statement of Income Tax in order to meet the specific legislation requirements.
- Search and study the whole fiscal and tax legislation, giving the necessary guidance to all areas of the company responsible for the issuance, registration, or processing of tax documents in order to prevent inaccuracies and losses to the company, as well as compliance with legal requirements.
- Meet and monitor the work of external auditors, providing all the necessary explanations, aimed at streamlining and quality of the audit work.
- Oversee the process and assess the preparation of documents necessary for the performance of corporate bonds of the company (minutes, assemblies, social contract and so on)
Desired Skills and qualifications
A General Manager should preferably be well-endowed with the following abilities: Strategic management and planning, ability to make valid and effective decisions, process improvement skills, strategic financial planning competences, creating and fostering workplace and production standards, coaching, coordinating, management proficiency, and performance management (Henson 33).
The job description of a Secretary to the General Manager
- Brands and manages appointments, meetings, and travel.
- Responds and makes phone calls.
- Type letters, reports, presentations, and other documents.
- Organizes copying documents.
- Archives documents.
- Performs administrative services in general.
- Controls the input and output matching.
- Welcomes visitors.
- Attends meetings and takes minutes of meetings.
- Takes dictation using shorthand or recorder.
- Conducts research and prepares documents.
- Calls or purchase office supplies
- Performs any other assistive task under the manager’s office.
The requirements of this profession
- The secretary should learn to type properly without typos.
- To be a good secretary, it is crucial to possess excellent interpersonal and communication skills. In this case, the interested candidate should be a good listener.
- The person should be as detailed as possible and always be independent in making decisions. It is also important to be very keen when typing on a computer’s keyboard.
Additional job description for this position
- Receiving phone calls directed at the General Manager’s office, filtering emerging issues, and forwarding the same to the respective persons or offices.
- Offering the most appropriate office solutions owing to workplace challenges that may arise from time to time.
- Carrying out external and internal links either directly or through an operator.
- Transferring phone call connections, requesting or transmitting messages as may be deemed necessary, and preparing correspondence, tables, and other types of documents.
- Organizing and maintaining records of agenda discussed in meetings of managers by providing schedules of meetings and advising the participating people in regards to dates and times.
- We are serving the public, domestic, and foreign partners, as well as receiving visitors and preparing matters to be addressed for forwarding to the respective sectors of the company (Pennell 286).
- Arrange payment of purchases made by the company as the need may arise. The secretary to the General Manager’s office should also request advances for travel expenses and equally prepare expense reports for the manager’s office in order to make all processes as transparent as possible (Pató 406).
- Check and place airline reservations, hotels, and transport arrangements on behalf of the General Manager and members of staff working under him.
- Open internal and external pouches and checking the recipients as well as facilitating the delivery of mail to recipients in a timely manner.
- Organizing and maintaining the archive department so that all documents can be easily retrieved whenever needed. Hence, filing etiquette is crucial at this point.
- Ensure safe custody of the company’s records that are generated under the office of General Manager.
Required knowledge
- Understanding the roles of a secretary is vital
- Comprehend how to best organize work and deliver correspondence
- Background knowledge in information systems cannot be ignored in the profession of a secretary
- Adequate knowledge of the official language being used in the workplace is also mandatory. This should include all domains of language, such as spoken and written. Needless to say, excellent grammar is crucial for any secretary.
Works Cited
Henson, Eldon. “Effective Personnel Qualification-does the Job Description Play a Role in CGMP Compliance?” Journal of GXP Compliance 15.2 (2011): 29-33. Print.
Hobson, Charles, David Strupeck, and Jana Szostek. “A Behavioral Roles Approach to Assessing and Improving the Team Leadership Capabilities of Managers.” International Journal of Management 27.1 (2010): 3-15. Print.
Hurtado, Pedro, Ananda Mukherji, and Jyotsna Mukherji. “A Comparative Historical / Methodological Analysis of Two Studies about the Manager’s Job.” Competition Forum 9.2 (2011): 268-274. Print.
Jacobson, Nora, Lucy Trojanowski, and Carolyn Dewa. “What do Peer Support Workers do? A Job Description.” BMC Health Services Research 12 (2012): 205-207. Print.
Pató, Beáta. “The 3D Job Description.” The Journal of Management Development 34.4 (2015): 406. Print.
Pennell, Kathy. “The Role of Flexible Job Descriptions in Succession Management.” Library Management 31.4 (2010): 279-290. Print.