Anyone feel like the team admin/IT even though you're the manager?

[Anonymous]

I work at a place that's tech heavy, with a lot of lawyers who are not tech savvy. As their manager I do all of the managerial and supervisory work, but apparently I'm their admin too. Whenever anyone encounters a problem they come straight to me. I'm the account administrator by default on a lot of accounts and I am an expert at most programs, but it's because I'm constantly picking up new skills. I also have the seniority to run down answers from other offices that they don't have. It's draining. When I was hired into this role 5 years ago, their prior manager flagged that they couldn't work independently and needed a lot of assistance. And the entire team was demoralized because when they ran into roadblocks, prior manager had told them to come up with a solution. They couldn't and just got stuck.

How do I get out of this rut? I know that by assisting them I'm speeding them along, but it's at the expense of my own higher level work. The new people I've hired have also gotten stuck, so this isn't just an issue with a few employees. I have very detailed SOPs and training materials, but my team doesn't use them. I get that our technology and programs are incredibly complicated, but that's just the job? I can't hire someone to solely assist with tech problems and our actual IT refuses to do more than install programs.

[Anonymous]

Mandatory training

[Anonymous]

Incorporate the SOPs and trainings into their performance plans.

[Anonymous]

Ask/appoint individuals as POCs/admins for certain programs, then let them be the first point of contact.

[Anonymous]

You need to hire admin staff. They laid off admin in my work and we all banded together to pester our managers with admin questions--- how do I book travel, how do I file fmla, blah blah blah. We got a new admin person in a month

[Anonymous]

Your job is to help your employees do their jobs.

You need to find out what sort of assistance they need and then provide that assistance. Which can be done by doing it yourself or by offering training or by hiring someone to take care of these things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your job is to help your employees do their jobs.

You need to find out what sort of assistance they need and then provide that assistance. Which can be done by doing it yourself or by offering training or by hiring someone to take care of these things.

OP here. I've created SOPs, done trainings (and videotaped them for the files) and have provided training materials. Our systems have just become increasingly complicated in the last decade and troubleshooting them takes time. If I can find the answers, why can't they? Half the time they're asking me because it's easier for them and the other half of the time is because they just can't remember the answer I gave last time. But when I don't answer them or show them where they can find the answer, they will just sit there and work won't progress. It's frustrating and it's a pattern with multiple people.

[Anonymous]

OP I feel all your feelings! I've been in that boat.

All I've figured out is:
Hire an associate and consistently refer things to her. Can't open the file? Ask Susan. Can't submit your expense report? Ask Susan.
And constantly refer them to your SOPs.
"Help, this budget isn't totaling! Waaah!"
"Here's a link to the budget template instructions. Check out the Troubleshooting section!"

They will either get the message, or pester Susan to death, or be forced to say out loud "I don't want to read the instructions. I want you to do it for me."

[Anonymous]

OP - you are living my life. I don’t know what the solution is but I am trying to find one. My latest was hire two admin and just consistently redelegate work. I tried referring people to the SOPs but it never helped/solved things.

[Anonymous]

I am a senior director and make 450k/ year and feel like a secretary with all the meeting coordination but it comes with the job

[Anonymous]

Do you have performance appraisals? In my last job, everybody had to take one IT skills training a year and maintain competence in a list of systems. It was in our performance plan and was scored like other skills.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by this:

our technology and programs are incredibly complicated

Is that the core work of your company or is legal supposed to be doing legal but these are their tools?

I work in app dev and tools need to be intuitive to some extent. If not you need to dump the vendor, demand support, demand better. There are some tools I have been forced to use (requisition comes to mind but I have blanked out the app because it was that bad) that were not intuitive and frankly a disgrace to software. I cannot believe companies paid for this, but it was one of those headlock fed gov things.

Is this your situation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you mean by this:

our technology and programs are incredibly complicated

Is that the core work of your company or is legal supposed to be doing legal but these are their tools?

I work in app dev and tools need to be intuitive to some extent. If not you need to dump the vendor, demand support, demand better. There are some tools I have been forced to use (requisition comes to mind but I have blanked out the app because it was that bad) that were not intuitive and frankly a disgrace to software. I cannot believe companies paid for this, but it was one of those headlock fed gov things.

Is this your situation?

+1 to this. I mean, no one should be spending so much time on this unless it's their actual job. If you really can't get more support from IT or elsewhere then you should definitely delegate these duties out to one person on the team. And specifically say you expect Larlo to be point on WidgetGadget and write it into their job duties.

And the reason that you're good at tracking these things down and solving these problems is partly because of your personality and partly because you are a woman. It's hard to work against that, but it's part of being an effective manager.

[Anonymous]

Refer them back to the SOPs every time. Every time. “John, it’s in the manual.”

Make sure everyone has a paper copy of them if they like paper, and centralize them electronically on a drive or sharepoint or via an email that you send each month without fail.

Incorporate “administrative management” or equivalent into the performance standards.

To me the only red flag is that your new people have problems too. I have encountered all this in longtime employees but for us, the newer ones get it quickly. And we specifically ask detailed questions in the interview - can you use specific basic programs, can you file your own pleadings without a paralegal, etc. So either you are not screening people properly, or your office culture or training is weird, or you really do have near-impossible software. And I have worked with some pretty terrible legal software. That’s not usually the issue.

[Anonymous]

Take 24 hours to respond to these requests. After a while they may start to realize that it would be faster to troubleshoot the easy ones by themselves.