I am researching the pros and cons of administrative job pools. If you are currently working in an administrative pool or have been a part of one in the past, your comments are greatly appreciated. What are the pros and cons of working in this type of administrative work environment.
Submitted by: Anonymous
|
I apologize for taking so long to respond. I could go on and on about this subject & had to think about it awhile in order to condense what I would say! I was part of, and then supervisor of a secretarial pool for a combined total of ten years. The company I work for has 7 divisions and we had 3 secretaries in the pool. All had similar skill sets, one a bit more advanced on Excel/Power Point than the other 2. Two handled the work load fairly and evenly, one would pick through the in box and choose what she wanted to do, if she did anything at all. Finally, as supervisor, I began keeping the in box in my office and assigning the tasks that came in to make the work load even for all three. Due to the nature of our business it seems the pool would either be overloaded, or have times when they were waiting for work to come in. A new Executive Director did not like the down times and dissolved the pool. Now, each employee is responsible for doing their own secretarial work. We have approximately 70 employees. The staff is very unhappy. They do not have the computer knowledge that the pool did and spend a lot of time doing things such as formatting documents. At MUCH higher salaries than secretarial salaries. The general consensus of the staff is that it doesn't make sense to have someone making supervisor salary spend 3 hours on something a secretary could have done in an hour just so a secretary isn't idle for short spurts of time occasionally.
In our situation, I believe a pool is probably the best way to go as long as it is well supervised. Unfortunately the decision to dissolve the pool is not going to be reversed so staff just has to adapt. I hope this helps you in some way. Good luck!
|
Anonymous on
9/29/2011 12:52:23 PM
|
|
I just read what the other person posted - and it confirms to me that unfortunately these 'pools' turn out to be not what one would hope. My experience has been that there are varying levels of competency (who knows what software programs and how well) and a huge tendancy by some people to claim they are 'busy' when there is a project that they don't like to do - or feel that it is beneath them. That is how my current situation is now - HOWEVER - with a good supervisor - and people committed to doing the work no matter how 'boring' or 'hard' or 'beneath them' this type of team approach can work very well - because I've been in that situation as well and it was great. Guess the bottom line is if you get a good leader AND and good team, it will work!
|
Office Person on
9/22/2011 6:54:46 AM
|
|
I currently work in a small admin pool and have for the past several years. I have been in a pools where the admins were each in different locations, where all worked in the same office and a combination of both.
The theoretical pros are:
When any one admin's workload becomes unmanageable, the other admins can share the load. Also, when someone's work is slow, they can help one or more of the other admins (and stay billable).
The reality/cons are:
Getting some of the other admins to actually help can be problematic. They surf the net, talk and text on their phones and visit with each other, yet are almost always ?too busy? when asked to assist. It usually takes a direct order from the supervisor to get them to share the work.
For me personally, when I do get help, the work product frequently ends up back on my desk to correct mistakes or completely redo.
I look forward to more input on this topic to see how my situation varies from others. I also wonder if others are working in a pool with a widely varying skill set (as I am) or if all the admins are at about the same technical level.
|
Lorraine Williams on
9/20/2011 11:49:11 PM
|
