Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has had a huge impact on the world of work. It has changed the way that companies operate, with many switching to remote or hybrid working. During the first lockdown, 37% of the UK’s working population worked from home. In 2022, 30% still work remotely at least once a week.
IT is the backbone of any business and there is increasing pressure to accommodate new ways of working. 1 in 5 office workers now work in a hybrid model. So with your employees in different places, it’s essential to ensure everything is running smoothly and there is a clear process for your employees to follow when things go wrong.
Many growing businesses continue to recruit in-house teams to manage their IT. But they are struggling. The post-pandemic phenomenon labelled ‘The Great Resignation’ is impacting their ability to manage their IT effectively because they are finding it difficult to hire in-house experts.
What does The Great Resignation mean for your business?
According to a recent Gartner study, only 29% of global IT workers have a “high intent” to remain in their current roles. The industry is also struggling to retain young talent, with only 16% of IT workers ages 19 to 29 planning to stay in their jobs.
This poses a huge challenge because the pool of potential employees is diminishing when it comes to recruiting in-house IT teams.
But there is a solution – Outsourcing your IT to a Managed Service Provider (MSP). MSPs attract experts and make it a priority to find the right people for the job. They also have the intel on which vendors they can bring in to help support their clients’ systems. Not only does this free up your internal teams, and reduce the pressure to recruit internally, but it can improve your wider employee retention.
How outsourcing can help
1. Frees up time
More and more businesses are looking to outsource their IT to reduce pressure internally and fight recruitment challenges. By engaging an MSP, you can free up the limited resources in your internal IT team so that they can focus on strategy. Internal IT teams are often busy with user issues such as password changes and equipment fixes. When something goes wrong, it means there are limited resources and expertise to fix it properly. Outsourcing your incidents or requests to analysts on a shared or dedicated service desk will give your internal team an opportunity to work on strategic planning.
2. Improves retention
Your approach to IT systems and equipment could be the reason you’re struggling to retain your employees. During lockdown, many employees experienced frustrations with laptops, desktops, networks, and systems that were not properly set up for remote or hybrid working. People were quite literally left to their own devices. Many businesses also failed to provide clear escalation protocol when things went wrong.
At a time when so many skilled people are leaving their jobs, businesses need to ensure that their core systems are not leaving employees exasperated. An MSP can work with you to create a system that works for your business and provide a clear process for employees to follow when their IT isn’t performing as it should.
3. Round the clock monitoring
Not only can an MSP help rectify immediate issues, but a dedicated team of experts can provide support and monitoring 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Issues can be resolved quickly and efficiently regardless of the time of day, so you can sleep easy knowing that your IT system is taken care of.
Read more: The Benefits of Outsourcing Your IT Support
Final thoughts
Outsourcing your IT to an MSP is an ideal way to protect your business from the impact of the Great Resignation. An MSP can recruit experts and bring in external vendors, reducing the pressure on internal IT teams. Furthermore, MSPs can help organisations transform their system to work for any model, be it office-based, remote or hybrid. Working with an MSP provides peace of mind so that when something does go wrong, there is a clear process to follow.
For more information on how we can help you in outsourcing your IT support, please get in touch with us.
*Gartner survey of 18,000 employees that included 1,755 who work in IT.