IT support has changed forever as more employees are now working from any number of remote locations – and no longer sitting behind a corporate firewall.
The days of taking your computer to the IT department for repairs or dropping help-desk staff by Cubicel to fix your network connection problems have been replaced by the need for support from anywhere on any device.
“Five years ago, [IT workers] It was about how to support things like Windows updates and changes to new hardware every four or five years. It was a cookie cutter, “said Mark Boker, a senior analyst at the research firm Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).
In the first quarter of this year, ESG conducted a double-blind survey of 200 U.S.-based IT decision makers responsible for helping desk support in their organization. IT help desk teams have reported sustainable levels of stress and burnout, according to ESG reports, which were commissioned by Splashtop, a remote access and support technology vendor.
Overall, 65% of IT helpdesk teams in the United States said they were experiencing stress and burnout, and 94% of organizations said they had experienced great resignation, or challenges in their support activities related to the lack of available talent. For IT shops, these challenges include maintaining support goals and “volatile stress levels that are complicated by increased workload.”
“The challenge in IT is around performance skills; Their responsibility and importance in supporting remote work has greatly increased, “said Boker. “And companies don’t want to increase IT staff. So the question is: is the company investing in IT tools that can help process automation and eliminate routine tasks? “
IDCAlthough most organizations say that remote support was influential even before the COVID-19 epidemic, it is now being viewed as critical. Ninety-nine percent of organizations surveyed by the ESG said that half or more of all help-desk tickets needed “distance support”.
“Any IT role that affects anyone starting from within the IT organization, supporting the help-desk, or dealing with staff, is affected,” Boker said. In addition, 96% of companies say remote support will dominate work pressure for the foreseeable future.
From a holistic technology perspective, many tech workers have taken up remote work, Boker noted, adopting collaborative tools as new norms and using them effectively. “It simply came to our notice then. They were only accustomed to private meetings.
“Of course, with people working from a distance, collaboration and communication are now an essential part of their work,” Bokar continued. “Things like peripheral support; Is the microphone working? Is the camera property installed and is it working with the application? “
Resolving the issue of end-point devices has become a particularly difficult challenge as employees access corporate resources through numerous home and Wi-Fi networks.
“Security and privacy is a whole different matter on its own,” Boker said. “It simply came to our notice then. An organization’s security stance has been challenged with remote work. That’s why [end-point] Device may be unknown – people are using their personal device, they are accessing [corporate servers] From an unknown network. “
Companies must now understand the real-world needs of end users; For users, having vanilla “small, medium and large” end-point configurations – as many companies do – no longer works, according to Fool. Instead, they need to customize the tools suitable for end-user work.
“If you have sales people who spend a lot of time on Zoom, you need to make sure that their environment is very reliable and has high functionality that enables the best customer experience,” Bocker said. “There’s a greater focus on IT tools for capturing that user’s telemetry, and end-points to enhance end-user experience, increase productivity, increase security, and improve communication.”
For more than two years after the epidemic, chronic stress at work has led to higher levels of burnout classified by the World Health Organization as a occupational event – especially for both Millennium and General Z, according to Consultancy Deloitte.
More than four in 10 Gen Zs (46%) and Millennials (45%) surveyed said they were burned because of the intensity and demand of their work environment. This indicates a significant retention problem for employers. In fact, 44% of Gen Zs and 43% of Millennials say many people have recently left their jobs because of the stress of their work, and Gen Zs and Millennials who have changed organizations over the past two years cite burnout as one of the top three factors. To leave their employer.
Nevertheless, one in four millennials and one in five Z do not believe their employer is taking burnout seriously or taking steps to address it, indicating that many companies still do not fully understand – or address – the effect of burnout.
Amy Lumis, a research director at IDC, says there are not enough IT personnel to support the hybrid-work situation scale.
“And those workers themselves need more support in the form of training to keep up with things like the new security protocols, new automated workflows and the pressure to support civic developers over their heads with low- and no-code offers,” Lumis said via email.
The challenge of IT support for remote workers is particularly acute in North America, with 44% of respondents to the IDC survey last year saying it was one of the biggest challenges they faced.
Data from IDC’s survey of nearly 400 technology leaders indicates that IT is much more open to acquiring talent across a variety of sourcing models, such as using “gig” workers, crowd-sourcing, using contract workers, and automating tasks with software tools.
IDC“We need to think not only about IT support as a resource for hybrid workers, but also about the support we need for IT,” Lumis said. “A lot of IT workers are drowning in service requests that they can’t keep up, new security threat incidents and a wide-ranging threat landscape across endpoints, networks, cloud and application contexts.”
Support for IT must come from additional areas, from additional team members, third-party support staff, training to keep up with new technologies, and automation of repetitive administrative tasks, Lumis said.
As a result, companies need to help IT adapt to the current work dynamics with a support model that extends seamlessly to end users. IT companies that no longer have personal IT support now rely on remote session technology to troubleshoot and resolve issues.
Seven out of 10 respondents to the ESG survey reported that investment support in remote session technology improves key performance indicators and expands the potential talent pool of companies.
In some cases, it’s as simple as making sure IT workers have the right technology. Ensuring that employee experience, employee engagement, and customer experience are high on the priority list is far more important than ever.
The tools available to companies range from simple end-point health check-up tools to specifically measuring remote network bandwidth, CPU usage, and memory, to help remotely monitor and operate remote staff, Boker said.
According to the ESG, most tickets to the help desk are associated with user errors. Therefore, it is essential to have a mechanism and technology to quickly identify, solve and help users learn from their errors. The ability to see directly what an employee is doing enables IT workers to quickly understand the problem and collaborate directly with the person to solve the problem quickly. This enhanced process trains the user in real time, as well as helps to identify other potential problems that may arise.
Companies that have significantly increased funding for remote session solutions are more than twice as likely to rate those solutions as great, according to an IDC survey. Companies that have significantly increased funding for remote session solutions also gain 59% more helpdesk staff throughput.
“I was once one [IT worker], So I think technology workers usually face challenges. They’re a consumer of technology and they understand what it can do, “said Boker. Hybrid workforce. “
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.