Pandemic or not, the back office plays an indispensable role in every business process. When back-office operations are managed, it leads the organization to success.
The back office hosts a lot of functions that keep your entire business operations running productively. But what happens when the backbone of your organization is distributed remotely?
The pandemic urged businesses to embrace drastic changes to keep back-office functions going. Learn more about what back-office roles make up an organization and how they work in the new normal.
The new normal of back-office operations
After the pandemic forced the world, including businesses, to adhere to strict protocols, managers had to find ways to adapt to unprecedented work changes. One of the most affected areas of these changes in the back office.
As companies explore new working arrangements post-pandemic, business leaders are rethinking options for returning to the workplace, including changing back-office patterns. Back-office work has to be resilient to disruptions and, at the same time, ready to transition seamlessly into the post-pandemic era.Â
And for this to work, it’s important to have a functional network of departments that can perform their tasks and responsibilities effectively.
Several organizations opted for a fully remote arrangement, while others explored the hybrid path–either way, leaders have unlocked new work models that are actually working. In fact, the demand for remote jobs has increased in 2022, and most of them entail back-office functions.
Back-office functions every organization should have
As the term implies, the back office is a non-client facing department of an organization. Essentially, they are the ones who provide support for front-facing staff.
In every industry, back-office employees have a variety of expertise such as information technology, accounting, finance, human resources, and management. Since they are responsible for several administrative tasks, their tasks are prerequisites to the overall business process.
To give you a better understanding, here are the major back-office functions that every organization should have.
Human resources
The human resources (HR) department is known as the first point of contact for job seekers applying for a job, but the reality is that the role of HR transcends recruitment. They are also the go-to of employees and managers requiring HR-related concerns.
Apart from hiring and conducting new hire orientation, HR generalists perform tasks from document processing, filing and managing employee records, and creating company policies to even maintaining harmony between the employees and the management.
The role of the human resources department has been especially crucial during the pandemic, as protocol changes and mandates came one after the other. In times like these, it’s necessary for HR officers to stay current and guide employees through every transition.
Administrative/management roles
Administrative tasks range from maintaining an office to managing internal communications, scheduling appointments, filing reports, checking databases, and maintaining office equipment and supplies.
However, during the pandemic, companies’ administrative staff exhibited flexibility as they also became crucial to supporting different departments and executives. Most of them have transitioned into the remote or hybrid setup and are likely to remain the same post-pandemic.
Finance and accounting
The finance and accounting departments of your company are vital for proper income and expense management, payroll, budgetary and financial statements, and financial performance analysis.
Since this job entails sensitive data and information, your team should be able to provide liquidation and a transparent overview of how your cash flow works. They should also align the company’s financial performance in compliance with the law.
Without good finance and accounting departments, you could be prone to financial errors and violate other rules and regulations. This includes non-payment of taxes and overlooking income-generating projects and donations, among others.
Information technology
Information technology (IT) professionals work in the digital fields of computer, network, and communication systems. IT ensures that all these systems are intact, secured, and functioning properly.
The IT team also serves as a subject matter expert and technical support in other companies. Working hand-in-hand with software engineers and developers, IT professionals work collectively as information systems managers, programmers, and network and computer system administrators.
Although they handle their own specific tasks, all of them aim to maintain an organization’s computer systems.
How the back office looks in the new normal
Offices have been intentionally designing a new working space to support the specific needs of their members and employees. The back office covers a big portion of these considerations.
The implementation of more flexible arrangements such as remote work has helped back-office functions keep up with the disruptions caused by the pandemic. However, digital readiness also plays a crucial factor.
To ensure that the back office is functioning accordingly, companies can digitize processes to optimize efficiency in staffing and operations, streamline processes with updated technologies, and leverage financial information that leads a company to growth and success.
