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Administrative Staff

We are a full service agency in Atlanta. We have 21 employees which include, AE's, designers, media specialists and web techs. We currently have 3 FT employees and 2 FT temps in the Admin department. The Admin personnel support the entire company. All benefits are handled in-house as well.

Can anyone tell me if you think we have too many admin personnel and / or let me know your situtation?

Lisa Waslis McRae Communications

That is a very similar structure to us.

Natalie Gerngross Gerngross & Co.

It sounds like you are overstaffed based on your description. I have been at this agency for 8 years. When we had a staff of 21, we had three administrative people, a receptionist, a billing/accounts payable person and the a financial/office manager.

Carol Stano Controller Drone & Mueller and Associates

Personally, I think that 5 people for 21 staff is quite high. How do you define the role of the Admin staff? Do they also do billing and financial work for you?

Best

Natalie Gerngross Gerngross & Co.

I do not know if you have too many, but we are a 60 person agency and have 2 admin people. Our admin only handle office manager type responsibilities.

Chris Poor IT Admin. ThompsonMurray

It sounds to me that you are well covered. When you refer to Admin staff are you including your controller, office manager types?

Cindy Nelson HenryGill Advertising

Personally, I think that 5 people for 21 staff is quite high. How do you define the role of the Admin staff? Do they also do billing and financial work for you?

Natalie Gerngross Gerngross & Co.

We have 11 people in our agency:

president 1 art director/vice president 1 creative director/vice president 2 account managers 1 financial manager (administrative) 1 production manager 1 financial/account management assistant (administrative) 1 full-time graphic artist 2 part-time graphic artists 1 multimedia developer

It's hard for me to say without more solid knowledge of what you consider administrative, how many clients you support, and what kind of responsibilities your administrative staff have, but our two administrative personnel handle everything for our company except the actual accounting. For instance, we wrap up each quarter in-house and turn the figures over to our independent accountant to summarize. Payables, payroll, and taxes (with the exception of quarterly and year-end taxes) are handled in-house. Our financial manager works directly with our insurance provider and investment broker to administer our health and dental insurance and 401K plan. Her financial assistant helps her with all of our invoicing and billing needs. This arrangement works well for us. In fact, our financial manager is getting ready to go part-time. We don't know all of the intricacies of how that will work yet, but we don't foresee any problems.

Five full-time employees seems excessive for a company of 21, but, again I don't know your specific situation. For us, two people working part-time seems to cover our needs.

I checked with our financial manager to make sure this seems accurate, and she agrees.

I hope this helps.

Kristi Long Production Manager Blair Communications

We are a full service agency in Rockford, IL. We have 10 employees which include AE's, designers, the president/owner, an HR/AP/AR person, a production manager, a marketing manager, and a technodweeb (me).

We have 0 (zeroooooooo - can anyone say ZERO? Please repeat after me, GOOSE EGG) full time or part time employees in administration.

I don't have the data for the other people in the company, but I know that at least 20% of my time that could be spent on production activities and programming, is instead spent on administration. I suspect my level of administration is higher than the other folks because I answer a *lot* of e-mail, and I'm starting to enter more of that under 'tech support' rather than administration. However, I think it's fair to say that at least 10 - 15% of each person's time is taken up with administration because we don't have any admin staff.

That being the case, I think we could use at least one full time and maybe even one part time admin.* You have double our employee count, so it's quite possible/natural that you would need twice as much support than we do, but I'm not so sure about triple...or more.

Is it possible that some work is being duplicated? Is there a way for you to evaluate the time records and run task reports to do these comparisons? It's possible that you have resources there that could assist in other tasks and production when you have deadlines or are short on resources in other areas.

* NOTE: These are the views of Scot Robnett and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or position of K.W. Powell & Associates.

Scot Robnett K.W. Powell & Associates

Thanks for your comments and questions!

Definately. Basically the Administration/Finance department contains all areas that help run the company. HR, AR/AP, WC, benefits, financials and such. Here's how we work:

One person handles the majority of AP/AR and financials. One person assists with HR responsibilities such as health insurance, 401k, training and such. One person assists the Media planner for half the week and assists the rest of the staff for the remainder. One person acts as reception and assists all employees.

These people are also responsible for running all errands, handling all filing, ordering all supplies, etc.

The final person acts as controller, superviser, office manager and tech support and oversees them all.

All billing is centralized in the Admin department. All financial reports and budgets are produced inhouse.

It seems to me that we would have to start making the other employees responsible for their own items if we cut down. Part of me though, says that the billiable employees need to be more worried about billing their time and not worrying about the little stuff.

What's your take?

Lisa Waslis McRae Communications

I think it depends on what those people are doing in their roles. Are they doing redundant work for the account and/or management staff? Is everyone self-sufficient? Are the office tasks completely automated? Is your staff entering their own timesheets, or is the administrative staff doing it? It sounds like you handle all the payroll and benefit admin, which can be rather time consuming, too. A receptionist and office manager are a necessity for a group that size. I think you need to examine the processes, first. Get the tasks down on paper and then determine who needs to do what and how much time it should take.

Carolyn Lorence Core Creative

We are a full service marketing communications firm. Our business includes brochures, catalogs, ads, media placement, public relations, videos, and internet work. We have 36 employees. From an admin standpoint, we have 3 full time and one part time. The duties of the three full time are as follows, one person is the controller of the agency, the other is the receptionist, the the third is our media buyer/admin assistant. The part time person does all billing and accounts payable.

I hope this helps.

Carol Stano Controller Drone & Mueller and Associates

We are an agency that reduced to 1/2 the staff from one year ago. We have 8 employees and numerous freelance employees. 1 President/Account Manager 1 Account Manager 1 Production Manager 1 Sr. Art Director 1 Designer 1 Rec/Account Assistant 1 Accountant/Controller/Office Manager(25-36hrs/wk) 1 Part-Time Administrative Assistant (5-10hrs/wk) 1 Part-Time Copywriter(24-32 hrs/wk) Freelancers (4-5) as required for jobs. We now have several people who work remote from home using PC Anywhere. They come in to the office for production meetings and as required to do specific duties. It has worked great and we are thinking of new ideas for a virtual office. I can manage the office from home and still be at home and have not encountered any problems. The President/Account Manager is out of the office a great deal of the time working on accounts and also will work remote from home. The Administrative Assistant loves to type and is very quick and proficient so she comes to the office and picks up dictation tapes and e-mails the files back to the office. She can also work remote and do various projects from home using her work PC. Our employees enter their own time sheets so I can also process payroll by remote!

Kathi Landis Creative Company

Again, everything in your list is handled here by 2 part-time people.

All of our staff are multi-task oriented. Our Financial Manager runs all the financial reports, creates client budgets, handles HR, payables, payroll, invoicing, and acts as office manager. Our Communications Specialist (receptionist) files, runs errands, orders supplies, assists with all billing and payables and office management responsibilities, etc. On top of that, she assists the account managers and production manager whenever needed. We don't have one person to answer phones, another to handle HR, and another to assist the Media Planner. For example, our Multimedia Developer and Art Director also act as Tech Support.

Also, you said you had administrative people assisting other employees. Could you find ways to help these other employees become more self-sufficient, so they don't need the assistance? Could your receptionist take on more responsibility? Could HR be handled by another administrative person? You may find it necessary to have five full-timers simply because it's what you're used to.

Perhaps you should have your administrative staff track their time for a week or two to see if their time is truly productive. If there are holes or you find instances where tasks are taking entirely too long, you may end up answering your own question.

Good luck!

Kristi Long Blair Communications

Does traffic mgr fall under administrative?

Rey Scott Operations Mgr Kich & Company

I found your comments very interesting but am wondering how large your agency is that these responsibilities can be handled by 2 part-time people. Half of our staff is multi-task oriented - the other half is just lazy. Anyway, we are a 30 person agency and until recently have fallen short in the administrative area. Currently our account coordinators fill in to add support from preparing billing previews to sending out FedEx's. Along with their own account work they also handle most of the trafficking responsibilities. One of our problems have been the task of inputting all of payables in a timely manner, this alone seems like it could be a full time job. We just took on a fulltime temp to handle the phones and moved our receptionist into more of an admin who assists in inputting AP's, handles all travel arrangements, orders supplies, etc. We have found that it was difficult for our receptionist to handle these tasks along with the busy switchboard. We then have another person who acts as the in-house accountant/controller, HR/Benefits administrator, office manager, etc. who at one time used to handle all of the above mentioned responsibilities but unfortunately wound up stretching herself thin and having a meltdown.

Kathi Sheehan Coyne Communications, Inc.

Traffic Manager is definately billable, not administrative.

Laura Karns Hanon McKendry Advertising

I agree traffic manager is definately billable, but so is at least 50% of administrative. We bill time for preparing billing, doing estimates, etc. The only time that is not billable is time spent only on agency stuff. HR/Operations/etc. If a client is involved, it is billed.

Shelly Constantz Just Partners

I'm production/traffic and I bill quite a bit of my time, but it's difficult to track my time for all the projects I touch every day. I typically end up only billing time for jobs I spend the most time on and chalking the rest up to general production/organization.

Kristi Long Blair Communications

We only have 12 employees, but our client load is average. We just work our staff to death. No, really, the only ones who are worked to death are the ones who take on too much.

We're a relatively small agency in a relatively small town. Our largest clients are city government and an international manufacturing company. We're full-service multimedia. All of our employeesÌ responsibilities overlap. For instance, my first priority is production management, but I am also a layout artist for technical manuals, a proofreader, and a copyeditor. That's typically the way everyone's jobs are here, although most are more specialized in one area (i.e., account managers).

The fact that we don't have more administrative staff doesn't put a strain on anyone at all. Of course, our president is very conservative and must see obvious ongoing need before he is willing to hire new people. Therefore, our system works because we've made it work. My theory is you make do with what you have until it becomes obvious that what you have isn't enough.

Kristi Long Blair Communications

I'm curious -

People who give feedback regarding the number and type of staff they have. What's your average yearly fee billing?

Jerri Menaul Synergy Network

Hey, now you're getting *personal*. :-p

Scot Robnett K.W. Powell & Associates