How much is enough staff?

[iPhonefreak]

How many members per staff member do you like to have? There should be a formula to this, but it isn't. For example, if there are 500 people in a town and 3 cops, that is about 166 people per cop. But if you had 166 members for every staff, that would be out of proportion. I think active people and inactive people make it really hard to decide when to hire.

 

[CodeMaster]

For each of my teams, I'd use at least 3 to 5 people. I don't like to have that many people unless I can use the help, I'm an independent person for the most part.

 

[Brad]

If I have a team, they have to be people who I can trust & whom are professional, so about 2-3 people usually.

 

[CodeMaster]

brad I feel ya there brother.

 

[wasape]

I think it depends on the work load level. If you involve yourself in every work task for a few days, by the time you think you are familiar and good at handling those tasks, I think you will have good estimate of do you need more people or not. Also I agree with @brad, quality is greater than quantity. Having a lot of staff who is not productive is not going to work, you should try to aim for a few staff who is productive.

 

[NickJonathan]

It always depends on how many people you and the other Staff members can handle. Don't compare this to real life since it is not really accurate. Forums/communities have report buttons etc which makes life easier for Staff members. I guess the number of Staff you choose varies on how many members you and they can handle.

 

[ozadin]

I would only hire people who I trust, and talk to. This could be my friend, or someone who is dedicated to the community and posts everyday. I generally don't prefer 1000 moderators on a very active forum, I would say 4-5 moderators is enough.

 

[Hanaseru]

I would probably say maybe one or two staff members at any point. The owner and those staff members should be able to handle everything

 

[jacktheking]

I think 2-5 should be enough if you have a 500 member website.

 

[SimplySidy]

Well, I was the only one managing the show when I had started out with a forum for me and I had around 450 odd members when I saw last. I fell ill and was on the bed for 8 long months and when I started recovering, the forum had all gone. So definitely, today, if I start with any other forum, I would like to have at least one more supporting hand who can at least keep the show running even when I am not available.

 

[fltdude]

In my case we are 4 people and we are doing quite good in terms of keeping the site in order. Of course if the site gets larger things may change in the future.

 

[mikong]

If you want to know how many members or staff should you hire, then you must know a thing or two about human resource management. This knowledge will eventually lead you to know all about staffing. This will also give you an advantage as you you will also be able to have an idea on how to create their job descriptions. Job description is a good start in knowing how many staff do you need for a specific position in order for a job to be done with less error. Needless to say, staffing is a vital step towards success for bench marking and hiring employees with key competences that your company needs.

 

[Guru]

It all just depends how much new content and moderation your site requires, how much time you have to manage the site and how big the site is in terms of members and viewers. I like to do most of it on my own, but do have a couple of staff to manage things when I'm away elsewhere.

 

[Yorozuya]

I only appoint moderators / staff members when things start to get out of hand. I manage a bunch of different sites so I know that keeping everything nice and tidy can be a pain in the neck when you have a considerable amount of visitors. I only have as much staff that each one of them can do his/her job with minimal effort and without hurting eachother's privileges. This usually means one person per site, preferably from an american time zone, since I'm from europe That way I can be sure that important issues will be solved in any hour of the day.

 

[RedSkyez]

I would say depends on how many active people you have surfing your forums, I tend to have 1 for every 20 people.

 

[DMang17]

Generally I will have another admin who will help me out on the site and 3-4 moderators. These people have to be people I trust though, on some websites I will have only one or two moderators because I dont trust enough people to promote.

 

[CavaloBranco]

I think it depends a lot of the work complexity. I don't believe i need more than 2 people to make a task, hard or simple. But if i need three/four different tasks to complete my work, i may consider having 2*(Number of different tasks) people as staff members.

I hope you did understand my point of view

Regards.

 

[Nymph]

I understand where you are going when you state that there ought to be some sort of "formula" to this, but as you should know, three policemen monitoring one hundred sixty six citizens is not a good comparison since, unlike those policemen, moderators can jump from thread to thread within a matter of seconds. As for how many there should be at a time, that is really up to you. How much vandalism, spammers, or malicious people visit your site? If it isn't very many, then you may make do with two moderators appointed from the active community. If, however, your forum becomes large, that is, in the thousands to ten thousands, then you will need anywhere between four to twenty moderators or more.

It really depends on the circumstances, there is no formula but your own intuition. You can create your own system and it would be perfectly fine.

 

[b.williams127]

I think it depends on the work load level. If you involve yourself in every work task for a few days, by the time you think you are familiar and good at handling those tasks, I think you will have good estimate of do you need more people or not. Also I agree with @brad, quality is greater than quantity. Having a lot of staff who is not productive is not going to work, you should try to aim for a few staff who is productive.

I agree with you there. I like to hire when the work is getting too much for me, or if I want to put some more attention into something else. I do not like too many staff members as they need monitoring too to see if they are abusing their powers. Having too many staff members makes keeping an eye on the moderation log a nightmare. You need enough staff to be able to remove spam immediately and remove anything objectionable or the users will not enjoy using for forum. There is a fine line between too many staff and too little and it can be hard to get right sometimes.

 

[fancy]

Wow! That appears a fabulous example IPhonefreak. Yes…… you have to agree with me here, the number of staff and its production are directly proportional to the administration potentiality. Look at the beam for instance if the weight outweighs the load will it work perfectly really? Will you get the exact measurement? Well staff and content are also similar in kind of a way. We need not to overload the contributors since this can also lead to production of low quality posts.
Remember the more you familiarize with anything the more you become so much embedded to it which will also contribute to some minor things being overlooked. Content here is what will be hurt in the long run.