tanzbar
Newbie
Posts: 12
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« on: August 08, 2001, 10:27:11 pm » |
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I have been asked by bossie to do up a proposal on the advantages of having an admin team. This proposal will be presented to his managers at their next meeting. Until now each manager that reports to bossie has had his or her own admin. Circumstances will be changing in the near future and we are looking at moving to an admin team. This team would be comprised of 5 admins in the main office with one admin in each of 3 satellite offices. Not having had any experience with admin teams, I would like to hear the views of those of you that have.
tanzbar
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bethalize
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« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2001, 03:44:33 am » |
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What I would like to know before I come down on the side of one option or the other, is what level of work do the admins do? If nearly all their work is processing information i.e. producing reports in Word, then it would probably be a good idea to have flexible resources.
Personally, I don't like admin teams. They make me feel like I'm in the typing pool. I don't like having my work thrown at me in dribs and drabs. I think it keeps me ignorant of the bigger picture. I also don't really feel part of a team to actually work on things. Rather I become cog in this machine that turns out word processing. You can't plan your work more than short-term, you never get faster at doing routine work because it isn't routine, and consequently you never get a chance to do all those "expand your role" things that you do when supporting one person or a small team because your day is totally filled with typing.
I also feel that having a flexible pool of admins goes some way towards differentiating the admin staff as opposed to intergrating them. Sure, you may have five people who all work together all of the time, but everyone else will drop by, explain what they want and push off again. You have created a sub group whose first loyalties are to that group.
I suppose a lot of this depends on the size of the office you work in. Perhaps two admins supporting four people might be a better way to go? If it is a very small company, then it might work. If it is a big company, however, it sounds to me that they will fill your days with unvaried work, precisely because you have no other responsibilities.
Liz (negative this morning)
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ssc1208
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« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2001, 08:25:17 am » |
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We "sort of" have this here at my firm. In our unit we have nine admins, one of which is our unit manager. She's the one that we report to, she gives us our performance appraisals, our raises, and she's the one we go to with problems, vacation requests, etc.
I support two teams, each with their own MoM (Manager of Managers), the unit managers they manage, and the associcates in their units. Comes out to about sixty people.
And each of the admins supports their own teams. Our people come to us first if they need something, but if we're busy, another admin in the unit can help out, or the associate can go straight to another admin.
I actually like it this way because my manager is an admin and she knows what it's like, she knows answers to my questions, and who to go to if I have an admin related question. I think this also makes networking easier, because all of the Support Managers, is what we call them, have quarterly meetings and they can talk and say "Oh, one of my people has been having this Excel problem, hey do you guys know an Excel expert?" or something to that effect. It's also easier to know when an opening is coming up, and to know what's going on in other teams. Training is easier, we've been able to organize a whole training program for new Admins.
I think the way we do it is nice, because you're not an island among the people you support, you have back-up and support of your own. So it's not really and "Admin Pool" that we have, but a unit of admins working together to support our people individually.
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tanzbar
Newbie
Posts: 12
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« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2001, 10:49:40 pm » |
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Bethalize - you have raised some good points. What I had in mind was along the line of what ssc1208 mentioned. The admins would be assigned to units and would support them first and if they had free time they would be able to help out in other areas. Egads, that we should revert back to anything even remotely resembling typing pools.
ssc1208 - is there anything about your arrangement that you don't like?
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ssc1208
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« Reply #4 on: August 13, 2001, 08:28:49 am » |
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Well, the person who is the Unit Manager in these types of groups usually supports the "big guns" in our case she supports the two Department managers. They're high maitenence and require a lot of attention. Because of this, sometimes we get neglected.
But we all understand that she has to make decisions and even we have neglected duties to the unit or to her (one on one meetings, unit meetings, etc.) because of the people we support. It's the nature of the beast.
The UM I have now is pretty good at this, though. The last one I had constantly rescheduled things and 'forgot' about meetings.
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