Back Office

    What is a back office?

    The back office comprises the departments that don’t directly generate revenue for the business but are still essential for the daily running of a business, focusing on processing and support functions. The back office plays a key part in risk management and the processes they put into place can help provide a conceptual framework for decision making within offices.

    Back Office Jobs

    Back office workers play a crucial role in supporting an office environment and a company. Whilst they don’t typically have any interaction with sales or service, they help create a smooth operation within a company. A few examples of back office functions and roles would be:

    IT

    The IT department doesn’t just ask you if you’ve tried turning it off and on again, it actually helps keep modern office operations running, especially with technology permeating every aspect of work culture. The IT department makes sure that all of the company technology and technological infrastructure are working optimally. Additionally, the IT personnel work on internal software and hardware to ensure that the company will be successful. In some businesses, the IT department can also be in charge of updating the website and ensuring that everything is as up to date as possible.

    In order to create a positive candidate experience, it’s worth looking at the interview and application processes. Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes, if the application process is lengthy, you’re likely to miss people out of the talent pool. Go through the process yourself and discover what works and what doesn’t for all types of candidates.

    Keep in mind that employed candidates may not have the flexibility of an unemployed candidate, making it difficult to commit to an interview in the middle of the day. If possible, try to schedule over the phone, video chat, or during off hours so that they feel their time is taken into consideration.

    It’s also worth bearing in mind how often you’re communicating and how you’re communicating with candidates within your talent pool. Be sure they understand what the next steps are, when they might hear back, any feedback that’s been given, and where they may stand within the process.

    At the end of the day, the goal is to fill the role and ensure that all candidates, whether active or passive, don’t have a negative experience with your recruitment agency.

    Operations

    The operations department are essential for making the product or providing services. They’re responsible for making sure the quality of the product or services are up to scratch and will provide customer satisfaction. Management in operations have a whole range of responsibilities that include supply chain management, support for their team, quality control, logistics, process improvement, safety and compliance and inventory management.

    Human Resources

    Human resources is a key department in the back office. The human resources department looks after a whole host of responsibilities. Not only do they ensure that employees are consistently enjoying their job, engaging with work, and maintaining their performance, they also are in charge of a company culture. Additionally, they are in charge of recruitment, onboarding new hires, training and career development, employee wellbeing, compensation and benefits, employee relationships, performance reviews, record keeping, legal compliance, the corporate image, and workplace safety. It is likely that human resources personnel will be responsible for administrative tasks that support staff in the office and help to drive efficiency as well.

    Accounting

    Accounting is the team of people who take care of all things financial. They take care of accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, finance reporting and maintaining the financial controls, which is also known as budgeting. Accounting is a very key part of the back office operations, helping to provide job security for a business organization.

    In essence, the back office personnel make office operations run smoothly and effectively. The different areas of business processes provide different support for the business. The front office activities, for example, focus on completely different parts of the business than the back office, meaning that they have differing focuses. The front office operations include marketing, interacting with customers, commercial retail, planning strategies for clients, and more.

    Does Eclipse offer integration for the back office at all?

    Of course, back offices are key to a successful business. Eclipse recruitment software supports your back office operations by offering configurable export functions unparalleled by other back office software.

    These functions include:

    • Export to your preferred back-office systems with a customisable export CSV layout designer with validation rules and linked export capability.

    • Create and use multiple export layouts from one simple interface.

    • Fully configurable chart of accounts configuration via nominal code templates and merge field based code mapping.

    • Configurable validation settings for back-office export.

    • Nominal ledger configuration for currency conversion write off.