What I do:

As office manager, I run a team of professionals that include everyone from administrative and secretarial to team members that contribute to the finance department. I run a very tight ship and every day brings a new challenge in project management that involves communication with various departments throughout the company.

I currently work with a small business, which means I'm involved with nearly every aspect of the company. In fact, many consider me the go-to person of the office, the one to contact first when a question arises about a project, expense concern, or human resources issue.

My goal is to ensure that everything around project management that hits my desk or affects my team is processed, evaluated, and solved smoothly and efficiently. And to do so, I analyze needs as they come in and assign appropriate team members as necessary. This often involves a lengthy and detailed list of projects and their deadlines, as well as who each project has been assigned to. I also have a great deal of input into hiring needs for the company, working with departments to determine when new hires are necessary, creating job descriptions, and evaluating team members for performance and eligibility for promotions. Similarly, I also work closely with the HR team to determine training needs and implement orientation processes when new members join the team.

Ultimately, I'm also responsible for the project management workload of each of my team members. I ensure that all have a manageable load and also review those assignments to ensure that efforts are not duplicated across the team. To ensure that we're meeting goals, I serve as liaison between my team and senior management, sharing direction and communicating progress on specific projects.

It's a job that requires analytical skills, communication skills, and tact—and Smartsheet helps me achieve these!

How I use Smartsheet:

On a weekly basis, I meet with my team to discuss active projects, the progress made, and the deadlines assigned to them. With Smartsheet's project management solution, I'm able to monitor progress and my team members can provide feedback about status and whether or not those deadlines will be met. Additionally, we're able to exchange our ideas and thoughts about active projects on discussion threads. This brings us together online to talk about broad solutions or simply finalize details to close out specific tasks.

Smartsheet also helps me share project management details, as soon as I learn about them—whether it's planning for an upcoming orientation session or implementing a new employee benefit. I can post project plans and send alerts to the team members who will be affected. This gives everyone the opportunity to get a heads up about basic plans and also view the posted calendar to determine when we can tackle new items and fit them into current workload. From there, Smartsheet helps me determine deadlines, share associated collateral, and move forward to ensure that stakeholder needs are met.