Top 20 Skills for Operations Managers

Operations managers are responsible for overseeing production in a company and ensuring maximized efficiency within an organisation. In a company with various departments, an operations manager possesses top operations manager skills and provides the necessary leadership and balance for the stability and growth of the business.

The top operation manager skills depend highly upon the work nature of said organisation or company, however, requires excellent business and communications skills. As an operations manager, some of the top operations manager skills are to maintain better management reporting, information flow, business process, and organisational planning, and review operational policies and procedures.

Different operations manager courses available on Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, etc. can help to build your profile for this job by assisting you in developing the necessary operations manager skills. An operation management certificate can ensure you a job in various industries like retail, communication, transportation, insurance companies, government agencies, and manufacturing, and also make sure that you gain some top operation management skills.

Career Opportunities in Operations Management

There are various career opportunities within operations management in both public and private sectors, some of them include –

• Business Operations Manager
• Quality Assurance Manager
• Operations Research Analyst
• Logistics Manager
• Production Planners
• Material Managers

20 Skills Required for an Operations Manager

Communication Skills

The first and foremost important operational skill for an operations manager is having good interpersonal communication skills. A job where you have to communicate with executives, employees, and stakeholders daily requires you to ace the communication basics of all these levels, hence having a dominant, persuasive, and motivational presence in all forms of verbal, non-verbal, and written communication.

There are many operations management training courses available online that will assist you in learning these top operations manager skills along with the technical aspects of these online operations management courses. Through such online operations management courses, you will learn how to develop, implement, review, and improve all the activities in an organisation that transform resources into goods or services and acquire top operation management skills.

Leadership

One of the most important operational skills required for an operations manager is leadership, dealing with different departments and laying out goals and plans one must have strong oversight to lead the management. Having skills required for operations manager can be ensured by winning the trust of employees so they believe in your visions and decisions.

Often, in an organisation, you might face difficult conflicting situations and to keep the management from stumbling an operations manager's strong leadership presence comes in handy. Operations Management Certification by Wharton Online (Coursera) is rated as one of the best certification courses for operations management.

According to Wharton Online through such operations management certificate courses, you will “Learn how to analyze and improve business processes, services or manufacturing by learning how to increase productivity and deliver higher quality standards and achieve efficiency. Key concepts include process analysis, bottlenecks, flow rates, inventory levels, and more.

Organisational Activities

As an operations manager you need to have certain skills required for an operations manager and might have to take up multiple projects and responsibilities at the same time, at this point organisational abilities come to use where you can focus on different projects without getting distracted and messing up responsibilities.

As an operations manager, you should be able to develop, implement, and review tasks at the same time without losing focus. Good organisational skills save time and prevent you from developing bad work habits like procrastination and ignorance while helping you maintain structure and order to enhance productivity and efficiency.

Throughout such operations management certification courses, you will join in discussions on productivity improvement methods, the development of quality assurance systems, the configuration of supply chains, and learn operations manager key skills.

Such operations management certificate courses will equip you not only with some of the operations manager key skills but also with the right tools, techniques, and skills to estimate, compute, analyze, and configure key elements of operations management.” The duration of this course is 7 weeks.

Time Management

Some of the most important operations manager key skills include managing a team and juggling between your tasks requires the golden skill of time management. While making sure your staff is efficient and produces the best quality work, it’s also important to make sure your work is completed within the deadline with these operational skills.

To ensure this it is important for an operations manager to know the skills of their employees and which task they can fulfill most efficiently while being on time. LinkedIn Learning has laid out a long list of courses on improving business operations.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the skill where one can analyze a given set of information objectively and conclude. An operations manager goes through a huge amount of data, information, research, and information to reach a conclusion that will help him in decision-making.

Harvard University is providing many online courses in Operations Management like Cybersecurity, the Harvard Business Analytics Program, Leadership, Organisation, and change, etc. All these operations management certificate courses have different time limits; you can check them on their official website.

Budget Development

An operations manager should have deep knowledge and information about financial and budgeting processes so they can manage the company's earnings and spending. This will enable them to come up with the best plans to work towards possible improvements.

As a successful operations manager you need to have a clear idea about how to make sales projections, and charts about balance sheets to analyze profit and loss statements. Now while doing the same one can save time by using business software, that will assist in making business projections, charts, and balance sheets.

People Management

A major part of the responsibilities of an operations manager includes dealing and communicating with people. At this part, they should know how to personally and professionally relate with the employees, seniors, and stakeholders.

As a key to management, an operations manager should know how to show tolerance in certain situations and try to understand other people. A workplace involves people from different cultures and societies, you should always be aware of their behavioral factors and show compassion. Being a link between employees and members of senior staff you should always be able to resolve conflicts and disputes caused by miscommunication.

Also Read

• Top 10 Online Courses for Operations Management
• Top 10 Warehouse Management Software

Teamwork

Production efficiency in a workplace cannot be achieved without teamwork and that's where an operations manager comes in. One of the major skills for an operations manager involves being able to boost teamwork. And for that, he needs to manage his employees diligently and be able to solve issues between departments so that altogether the organisation can produce a quality product.

Alison's free operations management degree online course is designed for business professionals of any level. You can choose from various sub-courses that range from risk management to workplace safety, customer service, and supervision along with ISO standardization. You will learn skills to plan, organise, manage, supervise, and control the manufacturing process and production in an organisation.

Staff Performance

Keeping track of goals and objections for every member of your team assures productivity in the long run. As an operations manager, you need to set up certain goals for each staff member and keep them updated about how they are performing against the goal.

This will not only help you to keep track of the skills of your employees but also ensure staff development. To make it clear, keeping track and measuring the performance of each employee will provide them feedback which will help them to grow and improve hence, the overall development of the organisation.

Motivation

An organisation can achieve maximum work efficiency only when the staff brings out the best of their skills. For that, an operations manager needs to keep his staff motivated by being optimistic about their company goals and encouraging teamwork and positive relationships between staff members.

As an operations manager one needs to be confident in the company's work structure and policies to help spread the same within different levels of the work structure.

Conservative

An operations manager skills include taking pride in a company's values and missions and making sure every employee is aware of them before they start working in the organisation. Make sure your company provides a written set of documents of the same in employee handbooks.

Flexibility

Business environments can often be stressful and prone to sudden changes. While being the one responsible for ensuring workplace values and rules, an operations manager should always be flexible enough to adapt to sudden changes and make sure to transfer the same to the staff.

Realistic Approach

To be a strong operations manager you need to keep a practical approach in your work and understand that your employees are the most valuable resource. Providing straight-up feedback as well as being all ears to opinions by core team members should be a skill for an OM. Direct leader and team member communication have always positively impacted each member and collective development.

Tech Savy

In this era when technology has dominated almost everything around us, as a capable operations manager you need to be aware of the most popular tech advancements. Many of your jobs like management, tracking staff performance, critical decision-making, budget development, and time management can be made easier and more accurate through various software.

Professional Judgement

Often you might assist HR in recruiting possible employees, for this as an operations manager you need to have strong professional judgment along with knowledge about the existing team so you can analyze how a possible employee can help you build a better team and fill up any possible puddles.

Understanding Customer Needs

To make any decision as an operations manager, and have operation executive skills to need to have a clear understanding of your customer's needs. Knowing this will help you a lot to solve customer inquiries and provide the best possible satisfaction to your customers. They will make you able to maintain good communication with them and also help your team members to solve any possible issues.

Delegates

To be a successful and happy operations manager you need to know how to get things done by others without making it look like an additional burden for them. This comes from a good relationship between you and your team members where they understand you need to give your full time and attention to decision and strategy making which will later be beneficial for everyone in the organisation.

Problem-Solving Skills

As operations manager you need to analyse multiple processes at the same time. Which requires equal attention and good analytical skills. Also, you should be able to come forward with multiple solutions for solutions. An operations manager should always be able to come up with the most promising techniques for various departments.

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• Top 25 courses on Product Management offered by Coursera
  

Planning Skills

One of the major responsibilities of an operations manager is to come up with long-term production plans for departments. For this one needs to be good with planning skills and be far-sighted to be able to detect possible problems and techniques that will be able to stop them from hindering production and efficiency.

Negotiation Skills

After coming up with strategies regarding production plans as an operations manager you need to negotiate with your staff members about the plans and make them believe their effectiveness. There will be many situations as an operations manager skills where you will need your negotiation skills not only to deal with your employees but also with seniors and stakeholders.

Conclusion

There is no specific University course for Operations Manager, one can reach this job position through experience in business management and the necessary skills. This position is very important for the stability and growth of a business or organisation if you are ambitious, confident, energetic, optimistic, dominant, persuasive, and motivational this position is made for you.

If you have a practical work approach and leadership was made for you where you are not afraid to go out and give strong feedback to your team members, this is certainly a field worth trying.