How to be respected as an administrator by superiors

[forwardsandbackwardsandup]

I have worked in various finance and admin positions in my time and always seem to end up in the same position of being disrespected by colleagues.

Gripes include:

• making clear the procedure for doing something to have them ignored. Example - return expense claim form via email and send me a photo of receipts. To find an email with claim form attached and being told receipts are on my desk. Yes it takes me 2 secs to take a photo of them, but it also takes that person 2 secs and I have made it clear that's the process. I'm not always in the office every week and a bundle of loose receipts can easily go missing.
• again, making clear the procedure for something then being asked to do it within a shorter timescale, or with incomplete information provided.
• not being told about events that require admin input until the last second
• being asked to raise an invoice for something that has been in their inbox for weeks and has suddenly become urgent and expecting me to drop everything to get it out that day.
• me asking for information ahead of time in order to allow us to plan work and cash flow and being told that the other team doesn't have time to provide that to us.

I could go on. The general theme is lack of respect for our team. Except it isn't just this workplace, it has been everywhere. What am I doing wrong? Or what are we doing wrong cos it isn't just me?

I've made clear countless times the correct procedures for things. Then there's the annoying thing of it taking the same amount of time for me to fix it as it would for me to reply and ask them to do it properly. Is that just enabling them? Do I/we need to toughen up? Except in my current job some of the things asked of us include helping vulnerable people and I know no one our team would want to see anyone out of pocket due to digging our heels in to prove a point.

I hear what you're saying. But by saying you don't have time to do something that we do is valuing your time over mine. Especially when everyone's time has been stretched thin by cost cutting.

I'm not a jobsworth. That expense claim I processed and paid within 2 working days (3 days quicker than I needed to) and I replied politely asking that he followed procedure next time as receipts can go missing etc. Thats why I don't want to be an arsehole. I understand people are busy and have stuff to do. I also have stuff to do. That stuff includes processing expenses. I wouldn't dream of doing half a job of something and assuming someone else would pick up the slack. I wouldn't do it to a superior nor anyone further down the payscale. It's just not me.

I hate that attitude. I'm a PA so I'm dedicated to 3 directors but I have members of one team asking me to arrange meetings with him instead of just asking me his availability or doing their own invite. I'm not their PA, I'm the directors PA. You want a meeting with him you schedule it and I accept or decline it on his behalf. I have enough to do with his demands. My role is no less busy or important than anyone else's just because I'm 'admin'.

And I will add all three directors can give me their expense receipts or photos of their receipts in a timely manner. So I don't buy this "we don't have time in our busy day to get it done, it's admins job to do it".

@SideshowAuntSallly that must be annoying. What they ought to do is ask him to arrange the meeting then he will delegate it to you to schedule. We do this partly for efficiency but also because our directors have access to meeting rooms that we can't book!

@DomesticShortHair the process results in an outcome, do your personal admin. It's part of your job 🙄

If it negatively affects the staff member, you don't do it.

If it helps a service user, do it - but ensure that staff are inconvenienced as you prioritise the service user's (and lower paid staff) needs.

Be a dick who has the high ground and start saying 'No.'

It's amazing how things start arriving in good time once that happens.

Context is important.

I work on a trading floor in a technical capacity. I’m highly qualified and experienced. Head trader has a very sick wife. I’m in America and have 2 disabled children so I know how to navigate health insurance better than 99.9% of people. I do all of his medical claims. I don’t have to but doing so reduces his stress levels by a massive amount. His performance is better and I get paid more as a result. I’m very well paid making mid to upper 6 figures. I also help make sure his expenses are pre-approved and reimbursed. To give context, it’s about $350k a year of expenses to be reimbursed so not small change.

Think about your impact on the organization. Can you deliver value by freeing up time of revenue generators? Can junior people working for these people do the work? Find a solution and drive that home.

When it comes to the more junior people, you can take a hard line. Senior people, it pays to be diplomatic.

From reading that it sounds like you don't respect your own position. You could and should tell them to take those receipts back and send a photo. You could and should tell people no, you can't do something in less than the time it takes.

It's about confidence but it's difficult to have as amin. This is one of the reasons I despise admin, it's one of the most difficult jobs in the world. I have PTSD from being an admin assistant.

Absolutely. If you are working as a team and you know what you are doing has genuine impact on someone. That’s totally different, I would help anyone who needed it.

lazy fuckers who think it’s beneath them?? Not so much

Think you might've hit the nail on the head there. Need a bit more self respect. Glad to see there are senior managers who have our backs. A bit saddened to see the ones who are not. The main offender in my case is male. It makes me sad to think of the super busy important women on this thread shitting on those below them. What happened to lifting each other up?

You lot have given me a bit of a boost. Except @DomesticShortHair 😂 that's just made me equally grateful we don't work together.

Tough but nice girl from Monday, with allll the boundaries 💪🏼

I don't really understand the expenses thing. We used to have loads of expenses claims before covid - the team used an app that took pics and read the info from the receipts. I approved all expenses - anything I couldn't read or supplied with insufficient info I rejected that specific expense with comment on what they needed to change and reimbursed the rest - it really didn't cause me any degree of stress, it was personal I just needed certain info or it couldn't be paid. No one dumped receipts on my desk because I couldn't pay them that way - they had to submit the expense through the app - there was no way around it.

it wasn't personal.

We're a charity and don't have enough regular expenses to justify the cost of an app. Most people are able to follow the extremely basic process. My expenses example seems to be the one most people are focusing on here, I suppose because I had a specific example. It's just one in a list of many ways that team members show their lack of respect for the administrators.

This is the one that stands out for me. The "I'm so busy with my 400+ emails a day" jobby. Admin staff are just as busy if not more so because they are being pulled in a ton of different directions simultaneously by the masses. There is this idea that they are just sitting there waiting for your instruction to come in and then they snap to it. It's much more difficult to push back or delegate as an admin because as this thread shows there is absolutely no understanding of the role from above and little respect. Unless you have done the job then it is very difficult to understand what it is like.

Op, it sounds like you are very efficient and push stuff through with the processes. However, one thing I have learned is that you really have to care a bit less. If you have a process and someone consistently fails to follow it then they're not going to change unless it causes them some pain. With the expenses, either send it back or offer to scan it yourself on the proviso that it will get done when you have time. You're really busy so you can't guarantee when that will be. Then make sure it gets pushed to the bottom of the pile and is late. Each time you're asked to do that make sure it gets later and later. You need to channel your inner Queen and don't complain and don't explain!

I used to run project meetings and I had a particular one where a senior member of staff was always late in submitting his papers. I was always very accommodating and would remind him about the deadline, make exceptions, etc. etc. until one day he was very rude to me about it and referred to me as a "junior member of staff". I wasn't a junior member of staff. Every meeting his papers missed the deadline after that it gave me great pleasure to add "no papers received" on the agenda next to his name. He was not popular with the Chief Exec after that...

I am your nightmare person. Senior and crap at following basic processes. (Which by the way are not written down anywhere but that’s another story)

I do appreciate and understand the importance of our lovely admin lady. And do not want to ruin her day or ignore the processes. And I am polite pleasant warm and often apologetic to her.

But actually- I am more important to the running of our organisation than she is, I have more to do than her, and her job is to make my life easier. So sometime I leave her to do stuff I could perfectly well do myself.

shoot me.

@Rainyday4321 Wow…. Just wow.

Charming. I'm sure she knows exactly how you feel. Us "admin ladies" aren't as dim as you think.

I hope she likes you as much as you love yourself! 😂

@Rainyday4321 is just saying what I was saying. Head of the trading desk needs to be sat at his desk trading, speaking to clients and managing their book. Yes, it’s far more important that they focus on their immediate job responsibilities than submitting expenses in the exact format needed.

The admin team are there to keep the wheels turning. If it’s a junior person not following the process, that’s one thing. A senior person, I would give them grace.

Generally speaking we push expenses down to the junior staff and have them do the admin to submit. When it comes to approval it’s flagged for review by the appropriate person so nothing bypassed. It’s not hard to do this.

You could be replaced within a week from a trawl through LinkedIn. Not only will it be impossible to find somebody who knows those processes without them being taught if she leaves or falls under a bus, you are by your own admission incapable of doing her job, as you can't even do parts of your own.

After all, if nobody's there to make sure the bills are paid, the calls are answered, the letters are sent and the invoices raised, there's not really a business, is there?

I get it
We get emails that say "can you book this?" And no other info
My manager got infuriated with it and sent a template form out which is ridiculously easy. We were spending too long emailing back saying can I have this info and this and what is it for etc
Think contact phone number, name, what needs booking and for how long
Anyone that emails now without the form gets an email back saying that we won't be processing the booking without the correct info

I take about 170 calls a day, I don't have the time to be emailing back finding out what I'm meant to be booking! Send me the info and I will do it but a telephone number and nothing else is useless

Do you say that about the receptionist, the security, the lady in the canteen, the cleaners. Everyone is important, without them you'd have no one greeting visitors, no one checking visitors so anyone could walk in, no one cooking meals for lunch, no one cleaning the toilets. Your office would be a dump.

Also, how have you got to a senior position whilst being crap at following processes? You're not You're just being lazy and think admin is beneath you now you're ever so important! The CEO can still do his own admin in my large global company(and he does as I've seen the invites and emails from him personally not via his EA). My lovely director boss can do his own admin, my other directors can too. I'm there to make their life easier, I'm just as important as they are I just have different responsibilities.

We just get "refused" back if we don't follow the procedure. So we follow it.

Would it be possible to send a company wide email regarding the expenses policy and stating going forward, this is paperless process. All receipts must be received via email.
I liked a PP idea of a sign on your desk.
I used to do expenses in a previous role, and the majority of people did follow the process correctly. It was usually the upper management that deemed themselves far to busy to scan in the receipts 🤦🏻‍♀️

How are the processes relayed to the staff? Are they presented in person at a team meeting, one to one, in a manual or via email?

I see my role as making the lives of the team I work with easier, no one sees themselves as more important even though there is a clear hierarchy. They know that I’ll get the job done. I’ll tell them if their expectations are unrealistic. I try to speak with someone if there’s an issue rather than email because when you’re receiving multiple emails daily, from experience, the one complaining about receipts isn’t always going to be prioritised. I’m proactive in looking for solutions for problems that may arise. I do consider myself lucky, I work with a great team not for them. I do wish that just once they would tell me the when the shredder jams though.

I've mixed feelings about this. The role of admin is usually to make the rest of the organisation run more smoothly by making things easier for them. Giving someone a bunch of receipts rather than filling in a form or uploading them to an app would do that. You should do it in a respectful way though - everyone in an organisation should be treated with respect and feel valued.

I've spent my working life in professional services. Those companies and firms only make money by selling the time of their professionals. The more time those professionals spend on internal processes the less they have to sell to clients and the less money they bring in, to the detriment of everyone, including the admin staff.

Until my last job the admin staff I worked with did whatever was needed to make the fee earners' lives easier. In my last job everything was very rigid and process driven. I felt unsupported and left. Incidentally, there were fewer admin staff in that organisation - they were being made redundant as the admin burden was being shifted to the fee earners, on top of their fee earning role. The fee earners were getting burnt out. In short, everyone lost.