How to Relieve Your Overworked Internal IT Department
Most people want their companies to run as smoothly as possible but it’s a difficult balancing act that will sometimes result in your business being overstaffed or understaffed. Depending on the type of business you run, this is acceptable to some degree. However, when you have specialists on your team such as an IT department, it’s important to keep them well-staffed and motivated. After all, they’re maintaining your entire company’s IT infrastructure and your business would suffer greatly without them.
But if you want to relieve your overworked internal IT team, you’ll need to figure if they’re actually overworked in the first place. So here are a few signs that show your IT team is struggling and what you can do to remedy the problem.
It takes forever to get a response from your IT team
If something is broken then you’ll typically want to contact your IT team and get them to give you a hand. Unfortunately, there may be times when they just don’t answer you for several hours. This results in poor productivity for everyone else since your problem isn’t getting fixed, but it might not be their fault.
This is either a sign that they’re demotivated or overwhelmed. Either way, you’ll need to find ways to relieve them a bit such as recruiting more IT specialists. For a cheaper and more flexible alternative, consider hiring an IT company that offers managed services instead.
Your IT team is being overwhelmed with trivial tasks
IT teams are important for handling technical matters such as cybersecurity or ensuring that the office network is running optimally. However, they might occasionally be called for something like a broken keyboard or a laptop that won’t turn on. In a situation like this, they may be called away from their office over and over again, resulting in an overwhelmed and demoralized IT team.
Make sure you cut your IT team some slack whenever possible. We’d highly suggest recruiting experts to handle specific areas of your business’s IT needs. For example, you may want to hire a managed IT services company to carry out general IT-related help tasks while your IT team focuses on things such as cybersecurity.
The ratio of IT technicians to employees is out of balance
It’s important to balance the number of IT technicians you have with the number of employees. If a single technician has to serve 100 employees and their tech-related questions, then you can see that it’ll get overwhelming very quickly.
As such, you’ll want to ensure that there’s at least one IT technician per 50 employees. In addition, you’ll want to have a dedicated employee on things such as cybersecurity, networking, or managing the hardware side of your IT. These specialists have dedicated jobs that demand their full attention, meaning they can’t be pulled aside to fix everyday computer issues.
You can either hire these specialists individually or consider an outsourced managed IT services company to help you fill in the gaps when needed.