| Detail | For this role |
|---|---|
| Department | Allied Health |
| Level | Manager |
| Reports to | Laboratory Director |
| Direct reports | Lab Supervisor, Senior Lab Technician, Quality Executive (Lab) |
| Experience | 8 to 12 years in clinical laboratories, with 3 years supervising a shift or section |
Lab Manager job description template
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Job title: Lab Manager
Department: Allied Health
Reports to: Laboratory Director
Location: [City], [office, branch or site]
About the role
A Lab Manager runs the daily operations of a clinical laboratory: shift rosters, sample flow from collection to report, reagent and consumable stock, analyser maintenance and turnaround time. They put the director's quality system to work on the floor and are the person the front office, hospital wards and collection points call when a report is late. A good lab manager holds turnaround steady on the busiest mornings without cutting corners on quality control.
Key responsibilities
- Prepare the monthly roster for supervisors and technicians across day, evening and night shifts, matching staff to sample volumes hour by hour.
- Watch sample receipt, accessioning and barcoding, and remove bottlenecks between collection, transport and the processing benches.
- Review turnaround time by test and section every day and act on delays before reports breach the committed time.
- Plan reagent and consumable orders from consumption and expiry data, keeping a minimum stock for high-volume tests.
- Schedule preventive maintenance and calibration of analysers with vendors, and arrange backup testing whenever an analyser is down.
- Confirm that daily IQC is run and reviewed before patient results go out, and escalate repeated QC failures to the director.
- Handle report delay and billing complaints from patients, doctors and wards, and close each with a written reply.
- Keep NABL records current: training files, competency assessments, temperature logs, equipment logs and controlled documents.
- Coordinate outsourced tests with reference labs, covering sample packing, cold chain, dispatch and result entry.
- Hire, induct and train technicians, and run competency assessments before new joiners report results independently.
- Report monthly volumes, turnaround, rejections and costs to the laboratory director with actions for the next month.
Requirements
- BSc or MSc in Medical Laboratory Technology, Biochemistry or Microbiology
- ISO 15189 internal auditor training is an advantage
- A postgraduate diploma in hospital management helps at larger labs and chains
- 8 to 12 years in clinical laboratories, with 3 years supervising a shift or section
KRAs and KPIs for a Lab Manager
Key result areas for the appraisal form, each with a KPI you can measure every month or quarter.
| Key result area | How to measure it |
|---|---|
| Turnaround time | At least 95 percent of routine reports released within the committed turnaround time each month |
| Sample rejection | Rejected samples below 1 percent of samples received, reviewed weekly by collection point |
| Analyser uptime | Analyser downtime without a backup arrangement under 2 hours per month |
| Stock control | Zero stock-outs of high-volume reagents, and expired reagent write-off below 1 percent of reagent spend |
| Staff competency | Every technician's competency assessment completed on schedule, at least once a year |
| Complaint closure | Report-related complaints closed within 48 hours |
Skills and tools
Tools used day to day: Laboratory information system (LIS), Barcode sample tracking, Biochemistry and haematology analysers, Temperature data loggers, Hospital information system (HIS), MS Excel.
Reporting line and career path
Next roles: Head of Allied Health Services, Operations Manager
Interview questions for a Lab Manager
- On a Monday, 900 samples arrive by 10 am and the haematology analyser fails. What do you do in the first hour?
- How do you build a roster when volumes peak between 7 am and 11 am?
- Which records would an NABL assessor ask for on day one, and how do you keep them current?
- How do you set minimum stock levels for reagents with short expiry dates?
- One collection point sends haemolysed samples every week. How do you fix it?
- Tell me about a technician whose competency assessment showed gaps. What did you do?
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What does a lab manager do in a diagnostic lab?
A lab manager runs daily laboratory operations: staff rosters, sample flow, reagent stock, analyser maintenance, turnaround time and complaint handling. They also keep the records needed for NABL accreditation and check that quality control is run and reviewed before any patient report is released.
What is the difference between a lab manager and a lab supervisor?
A lab supervisor runs one shift or section, allocating benches and checking technicians' work hour by hour. The lab manager runs the whole lab: rosters for every shift, purchasing, maintenance contracts, budgets, NABL records and the performance of the supervisors themselves.
What qualification is required for a lab manager?
Most labs ask for a BSc or MSc in Medical Laboratory Technology, or a science degree in biochemistry or microbiology, with 8 or more years of lab experience including supervisory work. Internal auditor training for ISO 15189 and a healthcare management diploma help at larger labs and chains.