We are looking to restructure our office. Instead of each admin being solely responsible for "their area," we would like to become more inclusive, hoping that this would eliminate the overworked/underworked performance structure we have now. Does anyone have any experience with this? How does "overload" work get funneled to different admins? Any ideas?
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From your question, I get the impression that their “areas” overlap. I have done some similar restructuring in our shop in three different departments, only one of which was admin, but my method worked like a charm in all three. I, with the affected personnel, brainstormed about everything that happens in the department and in what order. By “brainstorm,” I mean write without stopping to think…just spit it out. We then went through our list and figured out what tasks could be combined and which could be performed out of order. We went around and around, slim lining and refining our process map. We ended up with either a list or a diagram (depending on the department) of our flow. From that we were able to figure out the best locations for personnel and, almost more importantly, the best locations for “stuff.” For example, we added additional stamps (like “copy” and “reference”) in three offices to eliminate dead time from unnecessary walking. Another change was to add an additional job packet assembly station, including job folders and another set of stamps (both hung on the wall for space considerations), in the main copy room because the front office person often fills in for the shipping/receiving person. We found that the most impactful changes were those little additions of supplies. Also, by visualizing the flow as circular, hollow in the center, we were able to eliminate a lot of distractions and physical barriers (read: tripping over each other). Our office is very poorly laid out, but it flows like a waterslide now!
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Anonymous on
7/14/2008 6:46:20 AM
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From your question, I get the impression that their “areas” overlap. I have done some similar restructuring in our shop in three different departments, only one of which was admin, but my method worked like a charm in all three. I, with the affected personnel, brainstormed about everything that happens in the department and in what order. By “brainstorm,” I mean write without stopping to think…just spit it out. We then went through our list and figured out what tasks could be combined and which could be performed out of order. We went around and around, slim lining and refining our process map. We ended up with either a list or a diagram (depending on the department) of our flow. From that we were able to figure out the best locations for personnel and, almost more importantly, the best locations for “stuff.” For example, we added additional stamps (like “copy” and “reference”) in three offices to eliminate dead time from unnecessary walking. Another change was to add an additional job packet assembly station, including job folders and another set of stamps (both hung on the wall for space considerations), in the main copy room because the front office person often fills in for the shipping/receiving person. We found that the most impactful changes were those little additions of supplies. Also, by visualizing the flow as circular, hollow in the center, we were able to eliminate a lot of distractions and physical barriers (read: tripping over each other). Our office is very poorly laid out, but it flows like a waterslide now!
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Anonymous on
7/10/2008 11:39:27 AM
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We are a large company with very few direct admins. We have an Office Services Department which consists of 6 admins who support the entire company. We work with a "Track-It" system, in which people submit their admin requests to this system. Our supervisor monitors this site and distributes the work accordingly. You can run reports at the end of the month using this system and it will show how long someone works on a project or if someone is too busy. This system is a program that needs to be purchased and installed, but works really well.
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Mary Rafferty on
7/10/2008 11:35:40 AM
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We are a medium-sized firm. It is at times difficult to keep workloads distributed evenly. In that regard, our firm has cross-trained the admin staff. Admins in closest proximity cross-train with each other and the people each one supports. (Actually, there is a main "cubby-mate" and a "1st back up cubby-mate.") When one admin is overwhelmed with work, or out of the office, the other admin assists. There is a supervisory backup that can be contacted for assistance, should both/all Admins be in need. Management has basically made this mandatory, and, believe it or not, it works well.
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V.Dawn Brimer on
7/9/2008 3:50:40 PM
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In our office we have three admins/legal assistants and seven attorneys. No admin/legal assistant works for any particular attorney all of the time, we all work as a team and support everyone. From day to day this greatly varies our workloads and allows all of us to gain varied experience. If any of us get overwhelmed, we ask each other for help. If any of us get caught up, we ask each other if anyone needs help. This system seems to work very well for our office.
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Anonymous on
7/9/2008 2:12:23 PM
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This is a very sticky situation and one that I have been involved with
over the years. I have found that there are two types of people within
an office setting: those who are the "social butterflies" of the office
- the ones who are always behind in their work, never meet their
deadlines, and they always love this arrangement 100%, and then there
are those who are hard workers, manage their time well, get their jobs
done, and if lucky, are able to breathe a little bit by late Friday
afternoon (who always are the ones who get more work dumped on them
because of their co-workers who can't finish their own work).
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Anonymous on
7/9/2008 2:11:51 PM
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Hi,
We are a small office/division of a large community college. Our department deals directly with the outside public business/ manufacturing business and chamber of commerce in our county. Our students/customers are adults taught either on their site customized to their business or in our classrooms. We have looked at all work processes and jobs that our office performs and separated them by expertise, education, the persons love of doing those jobs and as we are considered the operations of the department we do just that. I still however, work for and take care of two of the managers specifically and then help all other managers in certain areas as putting classes on line keeping track of events on a web calendar and rooms reservation on an outlook calendar. I am then a back –up person in accounting/ ordering supplies/ so that we are never at a loss for getting a job done. That names just of few areas of my job. This would also help you if someone is busy working on a project and someone needs a contract typed your backup person who knows about how to type the contract would be asked to do that. So everyone has their likes their expertise and then are back-up for other areas of the jobs we as administrative assistances do.
Vicki
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Anonymous on
7/9/2008 2:11:11 PM
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I've found this really does not work and leads to a "Pool" type atmosphere. Also, someone will always be a "favorite," their skills maximized, maybe even easier to approach, and then they will get loaded up. I would suggest the Executive Admin Group meet regularly, even if it's over lunch, to create an informal team and an atmosphere of helping each other to succeed.
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Linda Palmer on
7/9/2008 1:16:17 PM
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We are in the process of re-distributing "miscellaneous" duties in our office right now. Over the course of time, some admin assistants have accumulated a lot of various tasks while newer employees have only had to work in their specific job areas. It was decided at the executive level that creating a new position just for this was a waste of resources. Our Administrative Assistant Forum (six of us) has the charge of looking at everyone's tasks and determining a fair and equitable division of duties. While these duties are very general in scope (reporting building maintenance requests, ordering supplies, distribution of keys, purchasing major kitchen appliances, maintaining directories and lists, buying office furniture, etc.) the method could work for any type of duties. I specifically asked everyone to look for areas of duplication of duties, of tasks that were related, and tasks that obviously fell to a particular person's area of expertise or interest. (Some like dealing with vendors.)
This is still in process so I can't report 100% success yet, but everyone has been very receptive so far. We are probably the best people to sort this out and do it fairly. This might be a starting point for you.
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Anonymous on
7/9/2008 1:13:32 PM
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The admins that can work well together could back each other up - A buddy system?
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Valerie Rau on
7/9/2008 11:49:46 AM
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As most of of already know, the executives typically have a favorite administrative person that they like to use, so in order to ensure that the work gets distributed to different admin, you should assign a point of contact person and ask that the executives bring their requests to that person and the point of contact person distribute work evenly to other admin. The point of contact person can create a skills database that reflects each admins level of knowledge in different areas and software proficiencies (i.e. basic, intermediate, expert) so that they know who to distribute various tasks to. I hope this helps.
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Kimberly Edge on
7/9/2008 6:34:27 AM
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