New Year Resolutions We All Should Take – Save The IT Folks!

The role of IT has expanded as businesses embrace the cloud and go digital. When companies scale, it is the responsibility of IT teams to ensure seamless operations as well as being proactive in resource planning. But, the onus does not lie solely on them. End users have to be prudent while handling the company’s assets or while dealing with internal IT issues. This is the time of the year when we set personal goals and pledge new year resolutions.

A while back, I happened to have a quick chat with my company’s IT head & other members of the team to understand how IT works. It was a big surprise to listen to all the frustrations and troubles they face everyday which we are totally unaware of. It is quite difficult to outline their job descriptions as they are the most versatile team handling multiple tasks including operations, procurement, asset management, governance and what not.

Here, I have listed down my IT specific resolutions based on my past encounters. I believe all of us would have experienced similar situations in our workplace and I am sure that following few disciplines would make things much better for us as well as IT.

Believe in self-service

We have the habit of walking to the IT service desk or messaging service desk agents directly on hangouts to get things fixed as soon as we face an issue. In my case, I rarely use our IT self-service portal because I am not motivated enough or I have always believed in face to face interactions for a quicker outcome. Sometime ago, I realized that it was just a myth because self-service portal actually had everything that I was exactly looking for. It felt good to access the portal and figure out solutions by myself. This changed the perception of IT self-service that I have had earlier and also taught me on how to be independent. This could mean a lot for our IT agents as they struggle everyday with ad-hoc requests which are not tracked anywhere in the service desk tool.

Consider self-service as the first touch point

Self-service empowers each one of us by providing all that we require under one roof and helps in ticket deflection for service desk agents. Let us start believing in self-service portal and record every ticket inside the portal that we report to IT.

Show some love  

Now, say this to yourself, “You’re awesome”. I am sure we would love to hear this over and over again. Recognition and motivation are those intrinsic factors that constantly motivate us to try harder. There are a lot of times when we just ignore feedback surveys that we receive or appreciate others’ effort. Similarly, we often ignore service desk CSAT surveys sent by our IT service desk agents for tickets resolved.

IT is a thankless job because we don’t really take the time and effort to appreciate them once the issue is fixed. We tend to blame IT if there is a problem but we fail to recognize their help when things work as planned. It is important for all of us as end users to recognize and motivate the IT team by showing our gratitude. Let us be generous in responding to surveys and be more conscious before making any midnight calls to IT or requesting for a password reset, the zillionth time. Let’s appreciate the awesome IT superheroes and celebrate them with appreciation mails.

Thank the IT guys whenever possible

New Year Resolutions - Being Human

Do-It-Yourself attitude

I often walk into the IT desk for any kind of requests be it printer installation, WiFi issue or a random blue screen that pops up. I think all of us as end users have the mindset to contact IT irrespective of the issue. IT does provide solutions for all these Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) which I rarely use. In reality, this would have reduced the number of interactions that I have had with IT and also saved time and resource. Let us have an open mindset to attempt some initial troubleshooting for trivial issues before reaching out to IT.

As millennials, we are tech-savvy and should develop a ‘Do-It-Yourself’ attitude to Tier 1 issues such as software installation, OS update etc. If the issue was resolved by IT in the past, checking the ticket history might give you the solution. Let us change the perception of IT and develop DIY attitude towards IT issues.

Attempt to solve IT problems by yourself

New Year Resolutions - Do It Yourself

Say ‘Yes’ to changes

Most times, we prefer to remain in our comfort zone and we have an aversion towards change. Even in our workplace, we are reluctant to try out new business applications or adopt any information/security policy that our IT team introduces. We often fail to follow what IT proposes because we feel IT is someone else’s responsibility. This might lead to a potential breach or an inefficient process management. As technology evolves, it is inevitable that we upgrade to newer versions and solutions. Let us be open to follow new processes or changes that our management introduces in terms of IT or technology. This solves the problem of end user adoption and better change management that IT is struggling for a long time.

Embrace new changes

Having said that, I am curious to hear about your New Year Resolutions and your priorities for 2018. Let us know what your resolutions are.

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