Staffing Ratios Anyone?

The industry standard staffing levels are reported by Gartner every year. Borrow the CFO's credit card as the report runs around $1500 (US) dollars.

They don't compile it for free. When he complains about the price, ask if he works for free.

But I remember it being around 150:1. But a lot depends on what you do. We support 250 PC's, spread around five buildings with 2 people. But we also perform all admin tasks for three file servers and a web server. Plus we do database development and maintenance, as well as application support and user training. Not to mention planning, budgeting and purchasing.

If you have 2 techs dedicated only to maintaining 550 PC's they should be able to hadle it. Assuming all PC's are less than 4 years old. All PC's run the same OS. All PC's are in the same building. And they are not responsible for configuring new PC's, server administration or application support.

Otherwise you could use a third tech.

Good advice from JamesRL. Staffing ratio is not a very effective model in today's complex (not meaning necessarily big)opereations. When someone asks me what their staffing level should be I always say "depends". There are always uniquenesses to an operation that makes it different and changes the mix. JamesRL gave a good indication of what some of those considerations are. The next best thing to a staffing ratio in the Gross Staffing Model. This model can be easly created in a spreadsheet and the process and calculation is as follows:

1. Gather the Necessary Information
 Number of Incidents per year
 Average Handle Time including After Call work time
 Vacation, sick, holiday, breaks, training, projects, admin.

2. Determine Total Work Hours Required (TWHR) Per Year
 [Number of Incidents per year] x [Average Incident Handle Time] = TWHR per year

3. Determine Work Hours Available (WHA)
 [2080 Potential Work Hours (PWH)] - [Vacation, sick, holiday, breaks, training, projects, administrative time] = WHA

4. Determine Actual Work Hours Available (AWHA)
 Determine the Utilization rate you will use for your model.
o A good industry average for an IT service desk is 75%but should not exceed 80% or the group will be faced with issues of agent burnout.
 AWHA = Work Hours Available (WHA) X Utilization Rate (UR)

5. Determine Gross Staffing Level (GSL)
? [TWHR] / [AWHA] = GSL (number of staff required)

The problem here is that this model does not take service levels into account (arrival rate). To improve the accuracy you need to go to an Erlang-C based model. There are a number of those on the market, including ours (www.radarinteractive.com) however for smaller numbers I would go with the Gross Staffing Model(GSM). The GSM is flexable as well as it can be used for staffing for various tasks including: Email requests, desk side, etc.

These concepts are covered in the HDI certification training we deliver.

You CFO is probably not an knowledgeable IT person. You should figure out which reports the CFO will believe. It is not one report you need. You need a bunch from so called industrial commonly accepted sources, like Gartner Group, preferably independent. If you can show your CFO several of these reports, all showing you need more staff, you've got it.

I managed an area with about 500 desktops. But they are all different kind of people - mechanics, accountants, engineers, graphic artists, supervisors, managers, drivers, tow truck operators.. I used 3 person to do it. And that includes hardware procurement, hardware installation, network installation, software development, help desk. The staffing cost was so high that I figured throwing away 3 year old computers instead of redeploying them saves me money.

Hello,

You can develop your own ratio with some fairly quick research and math:

1. Estimate the average number of Help Desk call events per month using some historial data. Ex. 2500 call events per month on average.

2. Estimate the average or weighted average minutes per Help Desk call event. Ex. 6 minutes per Help Desk call event.

3. Add any call prep or call wrap-up minutes to the weighted average minutes per call event to make an adjusted average or weighted average minutes per Help Desk call event. Ex. 1 minute call prep time plus 1.5 minutes call wrap-up time. 6 + 2.5 = 8.5 adjusted average minutes per Help Desk call event.

4. Calculate the total minutes per month required for the call events and then convert it to hours per month. Ex. (2500 X 8.5)/60 = 354.17 hours per month required for call events.

5. Divide the hours per month required for call events by the average number of hours per month available for an employee to arrive at the full-time employee equivalent amount required for call events. A full-time employee is normally ASSIGNED an average of 168 hours per month (21 workdays/per month X 8 hours per day equals 168 hours per month). However, with rest breaks, paid absences (sick time, vacation, etc.), paid training, and other situations, an employee is normally AVAILABLE about 85% of his/her ASSIGNED time, at a minimum. 85% of 168 is 142.8 hours AVAILABLE per month. Ex. 354.17/142.8 = 2.48 full-time equivalent employees required for call events.

6. Divide the average number of current users supported by the number of full-time equivalent employees required for call events to get the staff to user ratio. Ex. 850/2.48 = 342.74

7. The staff to user ratio is calculated to be 1 to 342.74.

8. To use the ratio to determine a revised staffing requirement, just multiply the new number of users by a coeffcient created by dividing 1 by 342.74. 1/342.74 = .0029. Ex. New number of users = 1300. 1300 X .0029 = 3.77 full-time equivalent employees required. Round down to 3 if you intend to use overtime to make up the 0.77 employee requirement. Round down to 3.5 if you intend to hire a 4th employee who will be part-timer. Round up to 4 if you intend to use no overtime or part-time employees but want to be able to support the call event volume without any shortfalls.

There you have it.

Joe Truttman
truttman@yahoo.com

I think we all face the same problems, it this regard. The link below is to a ZDNET video discussing the way ratios can vary.
http://www.zdnet.com/videos/whiteboard/users-to-tech-support-ratio/155252.
I'm covering over 50 facilities over 2200sq/km with approx 700 users, and have 5 technician. We are not yet a best-practices organization, so my ratio should be about 75:1, but I'm closer to 125:1. Your ratio is crazy!