What is office work and workflow?

Success in business largely depends on its correct organization. Both managers and ordinary workers should know what office work is. What are its features, what kinds are there, and what regulatory documents should be taken into account when organizing the workflow?

What is clerical work?

Any organization, regardless of the form of ownership and features, creates in the course of its activities a variety of papers. These can be orders and letters, and protocols. All of them relate to organizational and administrative documentation.

Office work is the activity to create documents of an organization, performed according to certain rules and requirements. Most often, enterprises allocate special employees engaged only in this area. In small firms, the function of a secretary can be assigned to almost any employee.

If you understand the essence of terminology (what is office work), then the origin of the word will become clear. This, above all, fixing official information on a material medium. During this process, an organizational and administrative document is created, which subsequently initiates certain actions.

The very term "office work" appeared quite a long time ago, but only in the middle of the last century it was formalized, being fixed in normative documents at the state level.

Office work and document circulation - what is it?

The organization can not exist independently of the law. In it there is always office work and document circulation. What is it, what are the specifics of the transfer of securities, how to properly register them? These issues are solved by specialists: secretaries, archivists, personnel department employees.

Office work involves recording information on a physical medium, creating a paper or electronic act. On its basis, the organization's document circulation is built-the movement of an order or letters, from its creation and ending with execution and sending to the archive or destruction.

Depending on the place of creation of business papers regarding employees and management of the organization, the document flow is divided into external and internal. From the source will depend on the further path of the order, orders, letters.

The internal workflow of the organization assumes the following stages:

• The creation of a draft document;
• Coordination;
• Signing of the draft document, date and registration number; From the moment of registration it is considered officially issued and accepted for execution;
• Bringing the content to the performers and control;
• Execution of instructions;
• Execution of the executed document for subsequent storage, depending on the time and necessity;
• Destruction of business papers with expired deadlines or filing them for archiving.

Stages of external document circulation are generally similar, but there are some differences:

• Documents come to the company from the outside. These can be the papers of higher and lower organizations, branches, normative acts from official bodies, judicial orders, letters of citizens.
• All business papers received in the organization must pass through the registration procedure without fail. It confirms that they are taken to control.
• The next stage is the work with the document, familiarization or execution of instructions.
• If necessary, an official response is made.
• The last stage is registration for long-term or archival storage, and possible destruction.

In addition, in relation to the leadership of the organization, the following types of workflow are distinguished:

• Ascending - from subordinates to supervisors (explanatory notes);
• Downward - from management to employees (orders);
• Horizontal - between peers (acts, protocols).

All stages of document movement are fixed in special magazines. They can be conducted in several variants:

• Logs for the movement of documents;
• Document cards;
• Electronic document management is most common in the vast majority of organizations.

Peculiarities of judicial record keeping

Many people ask themselves what is judicial recordkeeping, and what is its difference from the general. The court case is a slightly different package of documents and material evidence. Proper storage and movement ensures transparency of the law enforcement system. Judicial records management, unlike the organizational one, can not be voluntary. It is conducted by authorized persons and is strictly controlled. For him, all stages, including destruction, are normatively and strictly defined.

Secretary functions

Most employees of the enterprise very vaguely imagine what office work and document circulation are. For a secretary, this is professional activity.

The enterprise secretariat performs the main function of document management support. According to the form and peculiarities of work, the organization of the office-work service of the enterprise is divided into the following types:

• Centralized - all secretaries are in one department and report to the chief clerk or senior secretary.
• Decentralized - secretaries and employees performing their duties are dispersed by organizational units and are subordinate to different supervisors.
• Mixed - is most often found in large organizations.

The peculiarities of the document circulation at the enterprise will directly depend on the form of the secretariat adopted.

Instruction on office work

Regardless of the size and form of ownership, in any organization there should be a regulatory act regulating the movement of documents. What is a recordkeeping manual, and how to compile it? This issue worries not only secretaries, but also leaders.

Instruction for record keeping is an internal normative act of the organization, approved by an order or instruction of the management, of indefinite action. It describes all stages of the passage of the document, lists of posts whose signatures can certify the authenticity of official papers, provides examples of design, forms and forms.

Record keeping

In small organizations with a low level of workflow (less than 200 per year), there is no question what is the management of records management. Everything is decided by the employees themselves or even the head.

If the duties of the records management are not direct for the employee and are not specified in his employment contract, a decree on assigning these functions should be issued. This document should detail additional responsibilities, responsibilities and compensation.

Features of personnel records management

If the organization has at least one employee, then it will be necessary to create labor documents. The question, what is personnel record keeping, is especially actual for the enterprises with a small amount of employees.

Personnel records management - is to ensure the movement of specific documents related to the work activity of employees of the enterprise. Usually these duties are performed by the employees of the special unit - the personnel department. Their functions include receiving, processing and storing personnel documentation. Including processing of personal data that are secret.

Personnel workflow is usually conducted separately from the general with observance of rules of secrecy and storage features.

Optimization of office work

Despite the rapid development of digital technologies, many organizations are difficult to optimize the workflow. Continue in the old manner to keep paper correspondence and conduct regular registration logs.

This is due to two factors:

• Resistance to innovations of employees of the enterprise;
• Lack of finance.

Managers should remember that the optimization of workflow with considerable investments gives a noticeable economic effect.