Landscape Management, October 2013
BUSINESS PLANNER 2014 ILLUSTRATION ISTOCK INTERNATIONAL INC continued on page 78 Q P Î È Run È K A Im continually surprised and amazed by the lack of continuity in the amount of support staff per dollars of revenue among landscape business owners It ranges from two people per 5 million to one person per 1 million Notwithstanding the differences between design build and maintenance it seems there should be a standard correlation between support staff and revenue So whats the right number and why is it no matter how many people are in the office they still cant seem to finish all the work First lets define support staff Anyone whos not on the sales and production staff is in a support role The role can be broken down into a couple of key areas accounting HR finance office administration and sales and production production administration While both are support roles they have different focuses In many small businesses the responsibilities of these support areas are hazy After all these two roles are generally performed by one person early on so its easy to brand anyone and everyone who works in the office in a support role as administrative even as the business grows and evolves This melding of support roles eventually can lead to an enormous amount of blurred accountability and disconnected tasks that become almost impossible to manage efficiently Owners and managers spend a lot of time developing sales and production staff so these teams can be effective and efficient But we dont spend as much time focusing on our office or support staff Like any other hiring decisions the hiring of office and support staff should be related to company size and number of tasks On the finance support side staff size is related closely to the number of transactions and employees On the production sales support side its tied to the volume of calls and jobs or number of customers HOW MANY SUPPORT STAFF DO I NEED BY KEN THOMAS 76 LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET OCTOBER 2013
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