What to Do When ‘The Great Resignation’ Impacts Your IT Department

‘The Great Resignation’, a trend that has swept across the world, has impacted nearly all departments in a business. Some are affected more than others, but the reality is that the negative impacts of this trend are felt throughout all realms within the business sector.

While the reasons behind the phenomenon are still being debated, there is no doubt that it is having a significant impact on businesses and IT staff in particular. So what can you do if you find yourself in the middle of this trend?

When long-time IT employees leave, they take with them a wealth of institutional knowledge and experience. This can leave your IT department scrambling to keep up with the demands of the business.

There is also a heightened cybersecurity risk when IT employees leave, as they can take with them login credentials and other sensitive information. This can leave your company vulnerable to attack. Having an understaffed IT department can also make it difficult to keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats.

To minimize this impact, it’s good to take steps to ensure that your business has a succession plan before you find yourself having to scramble to find new IT staff.

Getting ahead of the great resignation

When it comes to your IT staff resigning, companies generally can proceed in the following ways:

• Try and hire a replacement: This has proven difficult lately for a number of companies to hire internal IT staff again
• They can do nothing and try to just get by: Maybe someone else at the company is sort of computer savvy, but is not entirely fit for the role
• They can outsource to a Managed IT Services Provider

The risk of doing nothing

The biggest risk that companies face when their IT person resigns is doing nothing. This is because the impact of this trend can be far-reaching and can have a significant impact on your business if you are not prepared.

If you do nothing, you are likely to find that your IT department is understaffed and unable to keep up with the demands of the business. If your IT department consisted of a single IT person that resigned, then you’d have no IT support at all. This can lead to a decline in user productivity, customer satisfaction and, ultimately, a loss of business, not to mention it poses security threats to your devices and employees.

In addition, you may fall behind your competition who, through Technology Planning, are able to invest in new technologies and ideas. This can have a long-term impact on your business and may be difficult to recover from.

The challenge companies are facing with hiring new IT staff

The challenge that companies are facing when it comes to hiring new IT staff, is that they need to find candidates with the right skills and experience. This can be a difficult task, especially if you are looking for internal candidates.

There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that there is a shortage of skilled IT professionals. This is due to the fact that there are more businesses than ever before that are looking to invest in new technologies and ideas. As a result, the demand for IT staff has increased significantly.

In addition, another reason why it can be difficult to find candidates with the right skills and experience is that they are often snapped up by the competition. This is because they are in high demand and there are often more jobs available than there are candidates.

This is why many companies consider an IT Managed Services Provider (MSP).

The cost savings by outsourcing to an IT Managed Services Provider

The cost savings by outsourcing to an IT MSP can be significant and often works out to be far more cost-effective than hiring an in-house IT person or team. In addition to not having to pay the added costs of benefits of an in-house IT person or team, you get an entire team of IT professionals that can assist you at every level for the same cost of a single in-house IT person, and often for even less.

The other cost saving benefit here is that you don’t have to worry about spending time and money to find a replacement should your IT person resign. This eliminates your IT person or team as being a single point of failure in your business.

Learn how to create an IT RFP to find the best IT services for your company.

IT Managed Services Providers provide a full team instead of a single person

Most IT MSPs will give you a full team of skilled IT professionals, rather than just one person. We call this the “One Team” approach here at a COUPLE of GURUS.

A great benefit here is that you are minimizing your risk by not staffing up an entire in-house team, but rather strategically partnering with an outsourced IT company that has an entire team for you, from level 1 engineers to level 3. This is great because you virtually get an entire team that can do everything you need, from basic helpdesk support to more complex network and infrastructure support and Technology Planning.

Other Actions you can take against the great resignation

There are a few other actions that you can take in your organization to mitigate the impact of losing any staff that may look to follow this worldwide trend.

Review your succession plan

This is vital in order to ensure that you have a plan in place for when key employees leave. You need to identify who will be responsible for what tasks and make sure that they are fully trained and up to date on all company procedures.

You should also consider cross-training your staff so that they are able to cover for each other in the event of someone leaving. This will help to keep your department running smoothly even when you have staff shortages.

Ensure you have a good onboarding process

It is important that you have a good onboarding process in place for new staff. This will ensure that they are able to hit the ground running and be productive from day one.

Make sure that you take the time to train new staff properly and give them all the information they need to do their job well. You should also pair them up with a more experienced member of staff so that they can learn from them and ask any questions they may have. This can take quite some time though.

With an IT MSP, this is one task you won’t need to worry about when it comes to comes to your IT staff.

Keep your team engaged

It is important to keep your team engaged so that they don’t get tempted to look for a new job elsewhere.

There are a number of ways that you can do this, including offering competitive salaries, ensuring a work/life balance, and investing in training and development.

Outsourced Managed IT

At the end of the day, IT should be looked at more as an investment instead of an expense.

Companies should focus on finding an IT Managed Services Provider that offers the most value with the best staff. This will help to minimize the impact of losing key employees and keep your business running smoothly.

If you are looking to (or are interested in) outsource your IT to a reliable and trusted IT Managed Services Provider, well you may have just found the right solution here, at a COUPLE of GURUS! As an award-winning company, we may be the perfect partner to help you maximize your IT capabilities and reduce risk during this great resignation trend.

It just starts with a conversation. Contact us today to learn more and see if we are a good fit for each other!