Curious about numbers ...

[emess]

How many admin staff does it take to support a team of 50 people? We have grown rapidly to 50 and our team of 3 is now run off its feet. A Modern Apprentice starts in 2 weeks time, but I desperately need to recruit another experienced person. We are likely to expand further in the next year, although I fear we don't have a big enough budget to recruit the number of people I would like.

I'm interested in your experiences, your opinions and also I'd love to know if anyone knows of any formulae to help me justify askign for more eg taking into account the number of people supported, turnover, or the number of orders & invoices processed, that kind of thing. Any ideas?

I have a team of 10 for 100 Operational staff. And we are very busy.

We have 11 (3 of whom are part time) for a technical staff of 56 - this includes an IT manager and a fleet/HR manager and 1 who is PA to MD and helps alot with business development - organising events etc.

Ah, thank you, that explains why I feel so inadequate!! We cover purchasing and paying for stuff, we deal with marketing (web site content, writing articles, attending exhibitions occasionally), we organise meetings and events (ranging up to 100 people at a time, and we have had 5000 visitors since we opened in 2010), we also deal with first-line support to the staff for day-to-day HR stuff like sickness reporting and soem parts of the recruitment and induction of new starts (a lot of that!), we support 2 directors and 2 deputy directors, we organise and minute 6 Board meetings a year, we provide quotes to clients and eventually bill them (not much of that, but every case is unique and seems to be different from the one before, therefore timeconsuming) and a bit of first-line IT support (we do have IT support from the mother ship some distance away, but there's a plan to get a dedicated IT person soon on site). Another office with a similar remit to ours has 7 admin staff out of 150, so I thought I was getting greedy wanting a team of 6 to support our growth to 100, but you've convinced me I'm not. Thank goodness because it's just not sustainable the way things are right now - I already work excess hours every single week (appreciated by the directors but unpaid - public sector) and am still not on top of things.

I am in admin and looking for another job! There is 1 of me for 90 staff though most of them are p//time!!

I'm not surprised you're looking

There is 1 of me for 90 staff though most of them are p//time!!>

Ours also includes dedicated Finance Manager and me, Head of Finance & Admin so I don't do a lot of the actual day to day admin stuff, and it's across 3 offices too, so we have at least 1 extra person than if we were all in 1 office.