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Support staff ratio for company size

Hi

This is a bit of an odd one. I'm trying to find a baseline for the amount of support staff needed as a ratio to professional/technical staff. 

By support I mean, HR, admin, accounts, IT etc. 

I appreciate it's based on the complexity of the company, so this is just a starting point. 

I'm not sure where I can find quantifiable evidence, any suggestions?

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  • I am not aware of any "standard" or "average" number or indeed where it would be collected and reported. Even if it were I am convinced it would be a statistic without a meaning given it would hide as much as it explained

    If you use the search facilities you will find lots of discussions on this just relating to HR staff where the ratios vary incredibly widely.
  • Hi Michelle
    I am also not sure if there’s any benchmark per se.
    However depending on your organisation’s objectives and cost structure you could agree to reach certain ratios in terms of either headcount or wage bill.

    If that can help, for instance we wanted to have a ratio 2:1 for front and back office staff because we were keen at focusing on client acquisition and retention rather than processing - we also wanted to automate more processes through IT enablement and digital platforms.

    Out of the back office group, a rough indication was 2/3 and 1/3 i.e. 2/3 focusing on core business processes and 1/3 focusing on support functions.
    Of course this is likely to be moulded depending on your own organisational context.

    Hope this helps
    Cheers
    Reena
  • Steve Bridger

    | 0 Posts

    Community Manager

    5 Mar, 2019 14:16

    Hi Michelle,

    As Keith says, this used to get asked a lot. Much less so since we archived most threads opened before 2013.

    The search still throws up a few discussions though.

  • In reply to Steve Bridger:

    Former Member clearly I have been around too long :-)