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.

The fee earners on this thread should be using their 'status' to get more admin staff hired, not just dumping stuff on admin who are already over-stretched, with the attitude that they are some kind of 'customer' to the admin staff. They are not, they are colleagues.

I was an admin to a team, almost of all of whom were useless with their part of the admin process. I had one joker even suggest that on a Friday I should sit with each team member, remind them what they had outstanding and 'get them excited about doing it'. Like some kind of walking to-do list. Also that instead of them filling in spreadsheets with info, I should sit in a meeting and they dictate to me what to fill in. A complete waste of my time, it would be as fast for them to type at their own leisure as to dictate to me.

OP I second the idea of returning the receipts that aren't photographed, and letting stuff fall through the gaps if it's requested late.

The thing is the bunch of receipts being sent without a form being filled in would result in me sending a very long list of enquiries to the person who sent them because I wouldn't be able to allocate them to the correct client/cost centre - it would take an age to sort for them and me. Instead, it's better to try and reduce admin for the fee earners so that the questions do not come back to them. Using an app to pull pre-categorised info off receipts can solve this problem - sure it costs a bit but so does everyone's time. Solution-based thinking is often needed - sometimes no one needs to do the grunt work - people just need to implement different procedures that can be followed with less resistance. Our fee earners get the Roll Royce treatment - without them - there is no business, I want to ensure that they do as little admin as possible leaving them time to generate more fees and have more downtime. They are not the enemy.

I think the people on this thread who are saying that the Op should suck up tasks are assuming that admin have the luxury of time.

Back in the old days when I started work (and dinosaurs roamed) it was possible to support managers with their every whim. It still is now if you only work for one or two people but the role of admin has changed and the expectation is to support multiple people and large teams. Most admin workloads are based on bish bash bosh approach of 'submit your expenses with photos attached and details of the spend included' so admin can check, allocate cost centres and submit to the finance black hole. There is little to no buffer in that timeframe for backwards and forwards requesting of info or scanning of photos nor the queries that come back from finance if stuff is missing.

Admin staff who are expected to support a lot of staff and are having to deal with a high volume of the 'book this for me' type of requests with little to no supporting information become overloaded very quickly. Unless you've been in that position it is absolutely impossible to understand what it feels like. The management approach for dealing with this is to generally to tell the admin that they need to become better at time management!

We generally have a harder time trying to convince the fee earners to stop trying to book things themselves - stop trying to organise meetings, stop organising travel - let other people do their jobs, their's is to earn fees. Our admin is not overwhelmed. Every company does not run itself this way.

It sounds like you have enough staff though. Lucky you. It's a different story for a lot of admin staff.

Could you find a supportive manager to help?

Eg my VP is extremely supportive of his admin. He reminded his management team that when she (the admin) asks us for something, we should respect her and respond within the timeframe given. We're to treat it with the same priority as if it were he asking, and to give her the same respect we give him.

@SideshowAuntSallly

Not for nothing but you do realize that the ceo will have an admin team behind them and emails coming from their inbox on admin items will rarely be written from them.

All EAs in my organization manage the email of the executive they cover and the marketing team manage their LinkedIn account. All those posts are not from them but carefully crafted by marketing.

I did say she, or any of the rest of them were not important. Read my message.

I am effectively like a CEO- partner at professional services. So I sell and reliever the work that brings in the income. The one that then pays for everything.
I am good at managing client relationships and doing high quality work. That’s where I ad most value. it’s quite stressful and high stakes. Being good at this is very different from being good at following processes.

Especially ones that aren’t written down.
I am crap at following processes.
I do the bits of my own admin that make sense - quite a bit. I don’t do expenses well, or filing of POs etc.

Without the invoicing and payment collection, you're just a load of hot air.

You asked about being respected as an admin, in my experience it’s having a ‘can do attitude’ and approaching with good humour.

I’ve worked on both sides and as a ‘superior’ I will personally always go the extra mile for the admin who will do the same for me.

I can’t remember all your examples but I’d suggest responding along the lines:
”yes it’s me again. I can’t process without the pdf, but I can see you are super-busy at the moment so I’ll photograph it for you as a one-off, but please don’t forget next time”
” Yikes, that’s going to be difficult to turn around in that timescale. I’ll see what I can do”
” Gosh it’s going to be difficult to plan without that info, is there anything I can do to help get it on time? “

I’d say that any admin person that is helpful and proactive, I would always do my best to make their job easier too.

That does sound frustrating. I'm an administrator too and in my team people are generally more respectful. I can't think of many occasions where I've felt disrespected. I work for a team of academics who are very polite and always show a lot of appreciation for my efforts. I do have a good line manager who has my back and will stick up for me if needed.
When we get last minute requests we simply refuse if we're too busy. We just explain that we need more notice. Can you also refuse?

I manage our admin team and fully support them in politely but firmly telling piss takers no. Your line manager is letting this happen and they should buck up. I'm sure you're fully capable of handling these lazy sods, but you should be doing so with the backing of management.

Your question was about being respected as a admin by superiors.

For starters- your choice of words not mine. I am not superior to our admin.

What doesn’t make people respect admins, is when admins fail to grasp that part of their role is actually to make (in this case) fee earners lives easier by running the admin in a way that accounts for the actual needs and constraints of the people they are doing it for. Not some bureaucratic form filling nightmare.

I also don’t respect admins who think that everytime I mess up a process it’s a personal attack on them and is disrespectful of them. It’s not personal. Get over yourself. It’s not all about you.

In the case of mine, I respect her, and her contribution. We both understand our respective roles. I do my best to not make her life a pain.

If you’d like to be respected, then showing a modicum of understanding for those whose respect you are after might be a good place to start.

@NeverDropYourMooncup without @Rainyday4321 admin don’t have anything to invoice or collect. What’s your point exactly?!? Fee earners need to focus on top line. Admin focus on enabling that top line growth getting onto the balance sheet. Admin are important but understand your role. Not everyone is equal. A partner shouldn’t be doing their expenses while an associate should be. If you don’t understand this I wouldn’t have you in charge of any admin function.

Ooh would love to know who you work for.

I have masses of respect for our administrator (and in fact have just promoted him). It’s mainly because he does everything so bloody well, has bags of initiative, is really flexible and has a great sense of humour.

Honestly you just have to start being more ruthless and following your guidance to the letter. No receipts? Request denied. They need to resubmit. Receipts missing from
your desk? Not your responsibility.

what’s your manager like? Do they support your team? They should really be fighting these issues on your behalf

you should put an automatic email response to incoming emails stating that messages will be responded to within X days and follow through with it. It doesn’t matter if they’re marked as urgent.

Reading with intrigue

I guess I’m lucky that I work in civil service as admin processes are respected and mainly carried out centrally or by an off site team. It’s full
of bureaucracy and no one would try and rush the processes like some of your examples. We have 100s of pages of guidance to follow and if someone isn’t following it, they just get sent a link to the relevant page. They don’t get their request entertained.

I don't know how lucky that is for anyone outside the civil service admin teams - people drowning in bureaucracy - no incentive to improve it and too many "computer say no", "I don't get paid to think I just need to process" employees.

Firstly be awesome at your job, which it sounds like you are. You could be a cow and push back if things aren't done properly. My suggestion would be to get the support of their boss to get them to pull finger and do things properly (assuming processes aren't overly complicated or onerous - and if they are streamline so they aren't, you'll be respected for that)

Haha it’s definitely not efficient but the rest of the department wouldn’t treat the admin staff like OP so it’s a balancing act

That doesn't mean they respect you - seriously these workplaces sound soul-destroyingly awful. What a waste of resources - what happens when someone uses their brain or does that not happen much in the civil service?

Haha it depends on your level of seniority tbh. Private sector can definitely be more productive in my experience - some of my public sector colleagues would definitely sink outside of civil service.

I believe the point is something like this - without admin none of the fee earning would actually happen (or, a much lower proportion of it would happen because it would be left to senior staff to sort out the paperwork and who knows how long that could take). It’s a symbiotic relationship. Admin is the nuts and bolts of an organisation; if you fail to invest in it (as many companies do) or provide support to this area of the business, your business will suffer. People running successful companies understand this. It’s quite unbelievable that there are people in this thread who seem to genuinely think that this work “matters less” or can be overlooked.

Also, the original OP isn’t asking senior staff to do their own expenses. I agree this wouldn’t be a good use of their time and it’s an admin job. What they are asking is for senior staff to follow a process for submitting their expenses claim in order to help the admin team clear their expenses efficiently - saving time and therefore money. TBH most admins “understand [their] role” pretty well actually - by the looks of this thread plenty of other people don’t.

The expenses problem can be solved by getting an app to do most of the heavy lifting - reduces the burden for both parties - because the app would be a hell of a lot more efficient and if someone could be arsed working it out, probably would save them wages too - but it’s third sector so maybe everyone is happy to give their time for free. And maybe deep down the admin staff are a bit too attached to their processes to consider a different way of doing things.