The point of this blog post is to encourage positivity and collaboration in the workplace and to acknowledge that everyone has an important role to play in the successful running of an organisation. Instead of ruffling feathers, I hope the text below helps you to better understand how the other side feels and motivates you to reach out to them to make things better. [Cue the beautiful choir!]
Introduction
Over the years, I’ve worked both in front office and back office functions. By front office I mean client-facing or core business roles and by back office I mean corporate services or support roles. So, yes, I’ve been both ‘the talent’ and ‘the administrator’.
This introduction is just to explain that I understand the challenges of both and that I’m not biased towards either. Even my blog subscribers are half back office, half front office.
OK, with my neutral, Switzerland-like status now clarified, let’s press on.
To my front office colleagues
You are the talent, the core functions. You are the teachers in the schools, the doctors in the hospitals, the policy officers in the regulatory agencies, the loan officers in the banks, the consultants in the consulting firms, the lawyers in the law firms, etc.
Have you ever felt like this?
You often find back office so frustrating with their rules and processes. They don’t know what it’s like in the trenches, dealing with ‘real world’ problems. You don’t have time for all that paperwork or to read all those emails. Even when you give them feedback, they don’t seem to listen. And the new processes and rules just keep coming at you – it’s never-ending. How are you supposed to get anything done? Then when you ask for help or advice, it takes forever and sometimes doesn’t even make sense. So annoying!
Please understand
Back office are also a group of professionals. They are ‘the talent’ in their world and not necessarily people that couldn’t make it in front office so chose back office instead.
They are also passionate about the organisation’s mission. They may not be frontline staff that teach the students or heal the patients, but they feel like they are doing their bit by helping their front office colleagues succeed or by finding new ways of supporting them.
You couldn’t do your job properly without them or at the very least your job would be much harder without them. They buy the supplies, keep you informed and out of trouble with expert advice and compliance checks.
They’re not out to get you. They are trying to find ways to make sure both you and your organisation are protected. They don’t introduce rules and barriers just for the sake of it… although I appreciate that it may feel like that at times. (Also, if you’ve committed fraud, they should come after you. Just saying.)
Back office also has to comply with the rules, not just you. Believe me, most of them don’t like rules much either and they’re the ones that have to enforce them. It’s not easy to get people excited about boring stuff or to ‘sell something people don’t want to buy’, so cut them some slack when you can.
Whilst back office is there to help, they’re not there to do all the work for you or absorb your risk. You still need to manage your underperforming staff, make sure you stay within budget, exercise your delegations properly, etc.
You are not their only client. If you want to get good service, you need to request it and provide the information on time, then make yourself available for any questions they may have. Don’t blame others for your lack of planning.
If you don’t like the way things are done, you can help change them. Don’t just sit at your desk and whinge about ‘corporate’. Instead, provide them with constructive feedback or suggest improvements that could be made. If you don’t think they will listen to you (though they should), find someone they will pay attention to.
Building relationships with your back office colleagues is a good use of your time. This will do wonders for your understanding of why things are done the way they are and will lower your frustration. It will also help them understand how things work in your world and how processes should be tailored for better compliance.
To my back office colleagues
You are the backbone of your organisations. You are there to lend a helping hand, simplify complex concepts and keep front office informed and on the right track. You work in functions like HR, finance, legal, IT, procurement, audit, risk, compliance, communications, corporate policy, etc.
Does this sound familiar?
You feel overworked and underappreciated. You are often taking things on outside the scope of your services to make sure they get done, most of which is happening behind the scenes and remains unrecognised. You also feel like the ‘bad cop’ even though your processes are there to help people out. You are often torn between making things easier for people and ensuring they’re compliant. Front office can be so ‘high and mighty’ sometimes, treating you like ‘the help’ instead of the subject matter experts that you are. They often ask for service at the last minute and then you’re stuck doing overtime to finish the job for them. So annoying!
Please remember
You wouldn’t have this job if front office didn’t exist. You are there to support and protect them, not to boss them about or to be annoyed by their requests. Tending to their requests is how you pay your mortgage so try to see your internal clients as paying external customers. Even just calling them ‘clients’ instead of [fill in the blank: ‘front office’, ‘other units’ or whatever] will do wonders for how you approach your customer service...and it will also remind you that it’s not just a task but a service.
You should model behaviour for front office. Don’t be the doctor that smokes or the dentist with bad teeth. Just because you’re back office doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you or that you should jump the queue. If you want to be taken seriously, don’t break your own rules or undermine your own advice. This will also help senior management promote your cause.
You can make your life easier by communicating the scope of your services and how you can best help your clients. Make them aware of what you can provide, the approximate turnaround times and when you need their input by. Not everyone will comply but it will at least reduce the amount of late or unrealistic requests you get.
Collaborating with other back office functions can help reduce your clients’ change fatigue and improve compliance. It’s exhausting for front office to hear about policy changes coming at them from all sides. Find a way to work together so that things are either introduced through a staged approach or though one big change period, then leave them be to absorb it all (with your support, of course).
Compliance is not automatic. Just because you wrote a beautiful policy doesn’t mean people will follow it. If you want people to comply, you will need to explain why it’s there, involve them in its development and then help them adopt it.
Less is more when you’re writing to your clients or otherwise trying to keep them informed. They are busy people with lots of distractions. Keep your messages succinct, focusing on the key points. You can always provide links and attachments for those who want to know more. Also, consider speaking at forums they are already attending so they don’t have to go to an extra thing.
You’re not supposed to take on their stress or responsibility. You can provide advice (make sure it’s documented) but at the end of the day, it’s their choice whether they’ll follow it.
Change (especially cultural) takes time. If you are trying to facilitate long-lasting improvements, you will need to take your clients on a journey and persist. This is hard, frustrating work, but so worth it in the end.
Building relationships with your front office colleagues is a good use of your time. There are so many ways you can do this. You could have monthly catch ups with your key clients to estimate the help they’ll need over the next four weeks, answer any question they may have, remind them of something they need to send you, comply with, etc. You could get involved in projects and working groups as an advisor or support person. You could invite a different client every time you have a team morning tea. As I said in my recent post on influencing, people are more likely to listen to someone they trust and they will trust someone they know, respect and like.
To senior management (executive teams)
You have a very important role to play in all this.
Regardless of whether you are from front office or back office, you need to emphasise to staff that both are important in achieving the organisation’s goals. If not, you will alienate one half of your business and impact talent retention. You want to have really good people supporting your business, not standard paper-pushers.
Senior management also needs to uphold the values, policies and other rules of the organisation. You may have come through the ranks of the front office, for example, but once you’re at the executive level, you are ‘corporate’ and people across the organisation are looking to you for pointers on how to behave. It’s your chance to do the right thing.
The executive team is across key changes impacting the organisation. As such, you’ll know best when it’s the right time to encourage your back office functions to collaborate and maybe batch or stage some initiatives to avoid employees’ change fatigue.
Give your employees some perspective. Remind both sides that it’s neither about front office nor back office. It’s actually all about servicing the organisation’s stakeholders, whether those are patients, students, external paying clients, etc.
Any thoughts?
Were you able to identify with some of the frustrations I described above? Have you found constructive ways of addressing them? Contact me and share your thoughts.
Thanks for your time.