The Mailroom Paradigm Shift: Leadership Principles in the Mailroom

The mailroom can be a hub of activity, and lack of leadership can create bottlenecks and increase the stress levels in your mailroom. Leadership can come from any level and is not dependent on title. Leadership skills are going to help you determine areas you can improve on in order to handle the mailroom challenges of a growing company. They also allow you the opportunity to gain acknowledgment from your superiors at the same time.

Here are leadership skills to focus on for increased efficiency in your mailroom:

1. Be Proactive

Firstly, a proactive approach to how you manage the mailroom is going to be invaluable. With mounting pressure from the C-level, little funding, and just a handful of employees, a proactive management style can help to improve operations greatly.

If budget is a challenge for your mailroom, perhaps producing a presentation into why your department should receive more funding might be helpful. You can list methods in which your proactive approach will successfully handle challenges of the growing company. Research ways in which you can more efficiently run the mailroom, such as inbound packing tracking software. This may encourage those with the control to give the mailroom more funding.

Staff respond well and often work better when they feel appreciated and motivated whether from a boss or a team member.  

2. Practice Time Management

Handling increasing numbers of packages can be a lot of pressure on a mailroom, but with effective time management, you can take care of these stressors. Using staff effectively to ensure that the busiest periods are properly staffed is good time management.

Similarly, knowing what tasks need completing by what time means you can delegate jobs appropriately. Using task lists and daily to-do charts can encourage a systematic approach to using available time to complete as many jobs as possible.

A challenge some mailrooms face is receiving the blame for things that go wrong- “it was probably a mistake in the mailroom.” When you organize yourself, your staff and the entire mailroom, you can clearly demonstrate that you run a ‘tight ship,’ and that the mailroom is not the reasons mistakes are being made.

3. Organize Roles & Responsibilities

When it comes to delegating such tasks, and staying on top of increasing package quantities, clarifying the roles and responsibilities of everyone in your team is crucial. Using your own role as manager, ensure all staff are clear on what their job requires of them. This means the entire team can concentrate on their duties, helping the day-to-day running of the mailroom continue smoothly.

When people know what is expected of them, pressure can be shared among everyone, potentially alleviating stress levels and decreasing the amount of errors made.

Another big part of keeping your mailroom optimized for success is organization.  Here are a few of our best tips for how to optimize your mail room today.

Source: HubSpot