What Is Mailroom Management?

Most offices get dozens—if not hundreds—of items delivered each week. 

Office supplies, personal packages, outgoing parcels, and even the occasional catering order find their way into an office’s mailroom—and even though email has replaced many of the letters delivered by mail carriers, the pandemic resulted in a 70% surge in package delivery due to increased ecommerce demand.

So, having some sort of mailroom management system in place can have a huge impact on your ability to organize what arrives at your office.

It’s an easy thing to overlook, if you’re not in a role that deals with organizing incoming packages and mail. But, mailroom management can be a huge headache for those working in reception or facilities. The average office employee expects mailrooms to be organized and well-functioning, but in actuality, accomplishing this feat takes processes, tools, and hours of work.

So, what exactly is office mailroom management, and how do workplaces rely on it to keep their business running efficiently? 

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What is mailroom management? 

In a workplace, mailroom management refers to the process of overseeing the point of contact between an office’s workers and any incoming and outgoing mail or deliveries. 

Office mailrooms are mostly used for deliveries from USPS, UPS, Fedex, Amazon Prime, and so on, but you also likely receive deliveries from specific vendors, mail from company stakeholders, catering orders, and even personal drop-offs (like flower deliveries for Valentine’s Day).

Proper mailroom management is all about setting up processes to ensure that deliveries are handled as smoothly and accurately as possible. And, ideally, mailroom management also involves giving admin staff easy access to information about what has been delivered (and for whom), without having to physically check the mailroom. 

Setting up a mailroom management process is easier with a mailroom management tool that provides resources to anyone responsible for the mailroom, plus sends real-time notifications to employees to know when their packages have arrived or been picked up. 

In short, mailroom management ensures that anyone who goes to an office’s mailroom is able to find where they need to go in order to take and/or leave with what they intended to.

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The key components of successful mailroom management

With an optimized mailroom management process, receptionists, admin staff, and facilities workers won’t have a headache each time a package is delivered. Not to mention, all employees will easily find anything that’s been delivered to them. 

Here are a few ways to ensure your mailroom runs smoothly and stays uncluttered. 

1. Clear communication when something is delivered

Employees want to be notified as soon as something they’ve received is ready to be picked up. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s a catering order for a client meeting or a thank-you note from an interview candidate—as soon as possible, employees should get a message that something has been delivered, alongside details on where to pick it up. This gets items in employees’ hands faster and keeps the mailroom uncluttered.

In a similar vein, no one on your admin team wants to spend all day manually sifting through packages, cross referencing the recipient with the employee database, and sending messages like “Hey Juan! You got a package delivered in the mailroom and it’s available for you to pick up any time 🙂.” 

This is where mailroom management tools like Eden’s deliveries come in. When a parcel arrives, employees get an automated notification using message prompts set by your team. These tools are integrated with your email provider, and with any chat software you currently use, like Slack and Teams, so that employees get notified via the tools they’re already using.

2. Mailroom analytics and inventory data

It’s helpful for receptionists and facilities staff to know what’s in their mailroom without having to get up from their desks and venture over to it. This insight is key to successful mailroom management, as it ensures these workers’ time is valued while helping other employees get info on their packages faster. 

From a high-level, strategic perspective, it’s helpful to have visibility into package delivery history by mailroom location, timeframe, and employee. These insights give your team the ability to improve your mailroom’s setup and operations to better fit the needs of your company and workers. 

To achieve “real-time” inventory visibility, consider using a mailroom management tool that offers insights into which packages have been picked up, by whom, and when, so that there’s never a question of where a package ended up. 

Related content: How Mailroom Management Software Can Simplify Office Deliveries

3. Set rules on what can(not) be delivered

Finally, an important part of workplace mailroom management is communicating what the mailroom can—and cannot—be used for. 

Depending on the size of the mailroom, the couriers available, and the amount of employees working at the office, it makes sense to clarify what’s permissible when it comes to a mailroom. 

For example, perhaps it’s a lean operation and should only be used for USPS deliveries. This would require food, personal, and even FedEx deliveries to be handled elsewhere. Catering deliveries, for instance, could go straight to the conference room where they’re needed, while companies can let employees know that any non-USPS-shipped packages need to be taken to the nearest FedEx or UPS location. 

Without these rules, an office mailroom can quickly become unorganized, overstuffed, or filled with deliveries that have no other way of going in or coming out. Employees may not know where to pick up their deliveries—even if you use a tool to automate delivery alerts. 

This aspect of successful mailroom management relies more on establishing processes for your company, rather than your mailroom management software. Still, it makes a difference in the efficiency of your mailroom overall, so it’s worth adding a section to your employee handbook or company wiki detailing how deliveries should be handled.

Making the most of your mailroom

Though the bulk of your office communication is likely conducted via email, managing your mailroom should be anything but an afterthought.

At best, a disorganized package and mail delivery process makes extra work for admin staff, and causes confusion for employees. At worst, someone on your team might not realize a critical piece of mail has been delivered, or an important package can end up misplaced. 

By establishing a clear process for how deliveries are handled, communicating that process to your entire team, and taking advantage of modern mailroom management tools,  your office’s mailroom can operate as a lean, efficient checkpoint.