The success of many organizations depends on a well-built work. Every employee, let alone a manager, must understand the paperwork. What is it, what are its features, main types, and what is taken into account when organizing workflow?
Basic concepts
Each company, regardless of its status and number of employees, in the course of its activities produces and processes a large number of documents. All of them relate to organizational and administrative documents. The main concepts in this matter include paperwork and workflow.
Paperwork is the type of activity that ensures the creation of official documents, as well as organizes work with them. In turn, document management refers to the type of activity that is aimed at organizing the movement of documents in a company from the moment they were created or received until the moment they finished working with them (sending to the recipient, submitting to the archive).
Often for clerical work, an organization allocates one or more employees who oversee the process.
No enterprise can exist independently of the law. It regulates the paperwork and workflow. Issues in these areas are decided by secretaries, archivists, and personnel.
Paperwork is based on data recording through the creation of a paper or electronic act. In this regard, a document flow appears, that is, the movement of a document from the moment of its creation to its execution. Document flow can be divided into internal and external.
The internal circulation of documents is represented by the following steps:
- Development of a draft document.
- Coordination with management.
- Signing a document.
- Document registration: date and number (after the publication of the document, it is considered accepted for execution).
- Bringing information to the addressee and control.
- Execution.
- Edition of an executed document.
- Destruction or archiving of papers that have expired.
External turnover involves the following steps:
- The receipt of the document in the company.
- Registration of the received documentation (necessary to control the execution of documents).
- Work with correspondence: familiarization, execution.
- Registration of the answer if necessary.
- Archiving or destruction.
Regarding the management of document management happens:
- ascending (from subordinate to boss);
- downward (from superiors to subordinates);
- horizontal (between subordinates).
Each movement of any document should be recorded in a special journal. This can be an accounting journal, document card, electronic journal, etc.
Who is responsible
Some employees do not delve into paperwork at all. What is this, the secretary knows well, because it is his direct responsibility to monitor the workflow in the organization. The Secretariat is obliged to fulfill the main functions of providing the office with documents. Given the form and features of the work, paperwork can be divided into:
- Centralized. The whole secretariat is in one department and reports to a single head. This may be a senior secretary or clerk.
- Decentralized. Secretaries, as well as those employees who can fulfill their duties, work in different departments of the company and are subordinate to different heads.
- Mixed. Often found in large enterprises. The organization of office work will directly depend on what kind of secretariat is accepted.
In small organizations, the function of the clerk can be performed by any employee who is entrusted with this responsibility, or by the head himself. If these functions are not specified by the employee in the employment contract, then for their execution it is necessary to issue an additional agreement where they will be indicated, and the amount of the monetary remuneration for the performance of the duties of the clerk should also be indicated.
Instruction manual
Regardless of the size of the company and its form, the head should not neglect the presence of instructions on paperwork.
The instruction is not only a normative act that allows you to establish office work. What it is? This is an internal document of the company, which is approved by order of management, not having a validity period.
Here the main stages of the movement of documents are prescribed, a list of officials who have the right to sign this or that document is given, examples of filling out and filling out forms are given.
HR administration
Consider HR records management. What it is? If at least one employee works in the organization, then the relevant documents are mandatory for him.
Under clerical record keeping understand the movement of special documents related to the labor activity of a citizen. In frequent cases, maintaining this kind of documentation is the responsibility of the personnel department. They must accept documents from the employee, process and store them in accordance with the regulated rules of the Instruction. In addition, their duties include the processing of personal data, including secret data.
HR records management is conducted separately from the general, in compliance with the rules of confidentiality.
Optimization
In the age of high technology and computerization, there are many enterprises, and not small ones, that continue to conduct paper work. Paperwork is still recorded in regular journals, and letters are mailed.
This is, firstly, due to the reluctance of employees to retrain, and secondly, not everyone has financial support. But each leader must understand that considerable investments in optimization in the future can significantly reduce company costs.