Management Span of Control and The Power of Models

There isn’t a steadfast rule in determining a proper Management to Staff ratio. However, there are some guidelines that can assist in establishing a ratio that allows Upper Management to efficiently assess and evaluate a department, department managers to efficiently assess and evaluate employees. And a company to create benchmarks to gauge and define a model ratio that works best with their business model.

First you should define the roles and responsibilities of Management, Supervisors and non-supervisory employees. Here are some suggestions:

Define a Manager:

A Manager has the responsibility for strategic operations, planning and formulates company policy or directs the work of a department. Exercises supervisory authority that is not merely routine or clerical in nature and requires the consistent use of independent judgment.

Additional Related-Duties may include:

Administers one or more policies or programs of a company,

Manages, administers, and controls a local branch office of a company,

Has substantial responsibility in human resources management, company-to-public or company-to-employee relations, public information, or the preparation and administration of budgets.

Examples of working titles that are often managerial include: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, Division Director (of a major function, i.e., Information Systems and/or PBX).

Define a Supervisor:

A Supervisor is an employee who has responsibility for daily operations and the authority to do, or effectively recommend, most of the following actions:

Hire,
Discipline (demote, suspend, terminate),
Reward (grant merit increases, promotions, bonuses),
Assign/reassign duties,
Approve leave requests,
Resolve/settle employee relations’ problems,
Formally evaluate employee performance.

Examples of working titles that are often supervisory include: Crew Leader, Department Supervisor, Operations Supervisor, Shift Manager, and Clerical Pool Supervisor

Define a Non-Supervisor employee:

A Non-Supervisor employee has the responsibility of performing daily activities as directed by Management and/or a Supervisor.

From time to time, traditional supervisory duties will relegated to employees. Here are some qualifiers that should assist in determining if a non-supervisory employee should be considered a supervisory employee.

Supervisory Qualifiers:

Is the employee making disciplinary or reward decisions? If yes, then the employee is acting in a supervisory role.

Is the employee the source person for difficult questions and problems from less experienced coworkers? If yes, then the employee is acting in a supervisory role.

Is the employee coordinating the team's leave schedule or work schedule? If yes, then the employee is acting in a supervisory role.

Is the employee presenting project updates to the manager? If yes, then the employee is acting in a supervisory role.

Is the employee responsible only for providing performance data toward the evaluation of team members? If yes, then the employee is acting in a non-supervisory role.

Is the employee responsible for formally evaluating staff assigned to a project but does not grant leave requests, make hiring or general staffing decisions, or discipline or reward employees? If yes, then the employee is acting in a non-supervisory role.

Determining Management to Employee Ratio:

Obviously having too many Managers as compared to employees can bog down the departments’ policy process, create confusion in the chain of command, diminish a manager’s related duties and can lead to the dreaded micro-managed environment.

Having too few Managers as compared to employees can result in duties being prioritized, not in order of importance, but in order to fulfill extended commitments. This action results in projects being placed on the back burner; delegation of traditional manager duties to less qualified subordinates and skewed performance reports.

Thus, it’s important to establish a Management-to-staff ratio that strives to create a balanced and healthy work environment for Managers, Supervisors and Employees.

This is a suggested formula to determine management-to-staff ratios. This formula may need to be tweaked depending on your specific department expectations.

Management-to-staff Ratio = [N+(S-1)]/S

where:

N=Number of non-supervisory employees

S=Combined number of supervisors and managers

"S minus 1" excludes the top company executive from being considered a supervised employee. Therefore, for those companies that are directed by more than one top executive, the “S minus 1" should be replaced with "S minus the number of top executives." For example, if your company does not have an executive director, but is directed by three full-time, salaried commissioners, the formula "[N+(S-3)]/S" will be used.

As an example, lets assume that a business has one (1) CEO, four (4) managers of four different departments and employees 25 non-supervisory employees.

The formula would equate to [25 + 5 –1]/ 5 or a management to employee ratio of 1 manager for 5.8 employees.

Why is the ratio important?

This is just a guideline to establish a model. The ultimate goal of this model is to maximize efficiency in employee supervision while allowing managers/supervisors to effectively manage. It should be expanded to allow CEO’s to collect and interpret related collected metrics about the health of his/her company.

Obviously if you have too few managers/supervisors in the chain of command, then those managers/supervisors will not be able to efficiently and effectively manage the employees or keep pace with written evaluations, schedules and other employee related programs. On the other hand, employees may carry too much responsibility and control too much of the department. These are measurable ‘health’ factors of your organization.

A wise person once stated “to know where you are, you need to know where you’ve been.” Creating a model and varying it to reach the most efficient and effective management-to-staff ratio for your organization will provide you with valuable metrics and a framework needed to reach that goal. It also allows upper management to judge how new programs effect the health of the company.

In addition to the suggested model, you should track other measurable items and combine them with this general model to create an overview of the health of your organization.

In this scenario a company has defined a starting management-to-staff ratio of 1 to 5.8. By using the 1 to 5.8 ratio as a benchmark, the company collects additional information about its management staff and its non-supervisory employees.

The company assigns a percentage value to managerial written evaluations that are properly submitted and completed on time.

The company assesses the management to employee relationships. It assigns values to the Managers perceived health in his/her department and the employees perceived health in the same department.

The company collects information on management and employee over-turn and assigns a value to the causes given for the exit of its employees.

The company assigns value to employee reward programs. Is the employee just an over-achiever, a great team member or does management empower them?

The company tracks the implementation of new programs and the program’s effect on health of the organization.

Using the collected metrics and values the company will start with an initial evaluation of its health and be able to tackle the most problematic areas, then those less problematic areas. The company can then use the historical and current measurements to move toward a goal of efficient and effective management.

This is a short article on the power of models and how they can assist a company in self-assessment and evaluation. There are a number of books and specialist in this area.

* - The formula, [N+(S-1)]/S, is mentioned on several US Government sites as the accepted formula for determining the Management to employee ratio.

* - Portions of this article are from government sites related to employee management.

Article by Charles Carter
www.cs2communications.com

About The Author

Charles Carter is an administrator for the Nortel Portal and Vice President of www.pbxinfo.com. He has 20 years experience in the telecommunications field, is a software owner/programmer, author of the fictional book "Chaos Theorem" and is currently the President of CS2Communications (www.cs2communicatons.com) - A Southern Mississippi Telecommunications LLC specializing in Nortel Meridian Programming, Nortel BCM Programming, Cable Plant Installations and Nortel Symposium Programming

VPN Explained - The Basics Of VPN Simplified by: Van Theodorou

The question of exactly how to explain or define a VPN is one that is often up for discussion amongst today's network consumers and communications providers. If we look at the literal definition of the words virtual private network, it can help to understand what is, and what is not, a VPN .

Using Webster's dictionary definitions of the component words, a VPN should have the following attributes:

Virtual - defined as "being such practically or in effect, although not in actual fact or name." Therefore, the first part of the answer to our question "what is a VPN" is that it is something that acts like a hard-wired network, but is actually not.

Private - defined as "of, belonging to, or concerning a particular person or group; not common or general." So, a VPN should be one where the consumer has exclusive use of the network links. (Note, this is different from a Secure Network, which may be a private or public network.)

Network - defined as "a system of computers interconnected by telephone wires or other means in order to share information." This is the goal of a VPN or any other type of network.

VPN explained in this manner is a network technology which gives the owner the ability to share information with others on the network by means of a private, exclusive link that is created by a method other than hard-wires or leased lines; usually via the internet. Before the internet, computers in different offices, cities or even countries could only talk to each other like people could - through telephone wires. As the needs for this type of communication grew, telephone lines became replaced by higher volume wires, like T3 circuits, but the concept was the same. For computer A to talk to computer B, there had to be a physical wire connection. For security reasons, you would want to make sure that only your 2 computers used that line, so you would contract with a vendor to "lease" that circuit. However, this type of network was expensive and difficult to expand, not to mention difficult for the client to have control over.

With the advent of the internet, connections no longer needed to be physical. As long as each computer has access to the internet, information can be shared using local ISP circuits, across the internet, and to the recipient in much the same way that it was when the computers were physically connected. This is why the way VPN works is considered a "virtual" network; the entire connection is not hard-wired.

The aspects of VPN explained in this article so far have not yet discussed an ever present concern in today's world - security. In an old WAN arrangement, the security of data transmission could rely entirely on the provider's guarantees. Today, however, a VPN keeps information private by means of encryption on both the sending and receiving end. There are a variety of encryption protocols, depending on what a company's needs are, who they need to communicate with (and therefore be compatible with), etc. The data is not only encrypted, but it is encapsulated, meaning it is sent in its own private "tunnel" or connection across the internet. No one can see the data, and even if they could, they can't decipher or change it. In this way, information can be sent across the internet without being susceptible to interception or corruption by those who are outside of the VPN.

In order to create a virtual private network, you would need to decide who needs to share information, in what directions, and how often. Next you would need to prepare a listing of the hardware and software systems you are currently using at each location. You might very well need to make changes so that the computers can talk to each other easily. You'll also want to consider just how important it is that your data remains secure, as this will have an impact on what type of protocol you select. Preparing this information will have you educated for the discussions you will need to have with potential vendors.

About The Author

Van Theodorou will help you slash your telecom expenses over 43% and assist or even become your telecom department at no cost to you. For a free analysis or phone consultation go his site at http://www.worldnet-long-distance.com