Office Administration Outsourcing

The work nobody notices until it stops

Office administration is the least visible function in most organisations and the fastest to cause damage when it lapses. Nobody thanks anyone for a diary that is accurate, an invoice that reached the right approver, or a document that was where it should be. Everybody notices the meeting that double-booked and the contract nobody can find.

It is also the work that quietly consumes senior people's time. When there is no administrative capacity, the tasks do not disappear - they get absorbed by whoever is nearest, usually someone paid several times more to do something else.

RHI provides dedicated administrative staff working your processes and systems, from a minimum of five.

What the team handles

• Diary and calendar management - scheduling, rescheduling, conflict resolution and preparation reminders across time zones.
• Meeting coordination - invitations, agendas, materials distribution, notes and action tracking.
• Inbox management - triaging shared or delegated inboxes, drafting routine replies, flagging what needs a decision.
• Document preparation and formatting - reports, presentations and correspondence from your templates.
• Records and filing - maintaining a document structure that survives the person who set it up.
• Travel coordination - bookings, itineraries and changes when plans move.
• Supplier and vendor coordination - chasing, scheduling and routine correspondence.
• Expense and invoice administration - collation, coding and routing for approval.
• Data entry and list maintenance - see data entry for the accuracy controls.
• Reception and call handling - answering, screening and routing where you need a front door.

The trust boundary

Administrative work involves more access than almost any other outsourced function. A capable administrator sees your diary, your inbox, your contracts, your supplier arrangements and often your financial approvals. That is not a reason to avoid outsourcing it, but it is a reason to design the access deliberately rather than granting a bundle and hoping.

We define what the team may see, what it may do without approval, and what always requires a named person's sign-off. Typical boundaries: they schedule but do not accept commitments on your behalf; they draft but do not send external correspondence unreviewed in defined categories; they collate and code invoices but do not approve payment. Financial approval in particular stays with you - see finance and accounting for how segregation of duties works.

Access is least-privilege and role-based, and inbox or calendar delegation is granted at the narrowest scope that lets the work happen. See security and data protection.

Judgement is the whole skill

The difference between administrative support that helps and support that generates work is judgement about what matters. Knowing which meeting can move and which cannot, which email needs a decision today, and which chase is worth making twice.

That cannot be scripted, so we train context rather than procedure: who your key relationships are, what your priorities look like in practice, what your organisation treats as urgent. It takes longer than process training and it is what makes the difference by month three. Continuity matters here more than in most functions, which is why dedicated staff rather than a rotating pool is not a preference but a requirement.

Working across time zones

Administrative support from India has a structural advantage that is easy to miss: work handed over at the end of your day is done before your next one. Documents formatted overnight, inboxes triaged before you open them, diaries reconciled while you sleep.

That only works if the handover is disciplined - a clear queue of what was asked for, and a clear report of what was done and what was blocked. We treat that as a defined task rather than something that happens if there is time. Coverage is built from shift units, and overlapping hours with your team are worth planning for even when the work is asynchronous, because some questions need answering in real time.

Systems

Agents work in your systems - your calendar, your email, your document storage, your finance and procurement tools. Our teams are experienced across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace administration and the common document and expense platforms. See technology.

Where your document structure is currently improvised, fixing it is usually the highest-value first project. A filing convention nobody documented is one that fails when the person who invented it is unavailable.

Quality and reporting

Administrative quality is measured on accuracy, timeliness and judgement. Scorecard criteria include whether the task was completed as specified, whether deadlines were met, whether the trust boundary was respected - scored pass-or-fail - and whether escalation happened when it should have.

Reporting covers task volume by category, completion within target, error and rework rate, and escalation rate. Rework rate is the most useful: rising, it usually means task instructions are ambiguous rather than that the team is careless. See quality assurance. Figures published elsewhere on this site are historical or representative and campaign-dependent.

Getting started, and what it costs

Priced per dedicated agent per month with a five-agent minimum - published rates and what moves them. Because the work is varied, scoping matters more here than on channel-based services: we would rather agree a specific task list than a vague remit that disappoints both sides.

Bring a list of the administrative tasks currently absorbing your team's time and roughly how many hours a week each takes. That conversation usually reveals two or three tasks worth moving immediately and one that should be fixed rather than outsourced. Related: HR outsourcing, data entry. Talk to us.