IT teams are increasingly overwhelmed by the mounting pressure of compliance requirements, which can lead to burnout and hinder productivity.
Complex regulations, combined with daily IT operations, can strain resources and divert focus from strategic initiatives.
This blog explores how co-managed IT solutions and Microsoft 365 optimization can alleviate this burden, streamline compliance processes, and ultimately reduce IT burnout.
IT Compliance is Complex
Compliance is complex and convoluted. It encompasses a wide range of responsibilities that extend beyond mere technical security.
For IT teams, compliance entails maintaining up-to-date security policies, conducting risk assessments, developing incident response plans, managing vendor relationships, addressing vulnerabilities, and ensuring adherence to relevant regulations.
The processes and documentation required for compliance can be extensive.
Another significant challenge for compliance is staying up-to-date with numerous regulations. This is in addition to the IT team’s daily IT work, which includes resolving user issues, upgrading hardware, and deploying software.
As projects grow more complex or issues become critical, the internal staff face compliance requirements that exceed their skill set.
Project complexities can lead to feeling stuck just “chasing compliance” and IT Burnout.
Compliance and IT Burnout
IT burnout is a significant issue within IT teams where staff can be overworked and exhausted. Factors such as the nature of the work, high workloads, unclear expectations, and the sheer volume of compliance-related tasks contribute to this problem.
Strategies to reduce burnout typically involve workload management, clarifying responsibilities, optimizing processes, aligning staff with their competencies, and partnering with a Managed Service Provider for co-managed IT.
How Can Co-Managed IT Reduce Burnout?
To mitigate the burnout associated with compliance requirements, co-managed IT can help lighten the load by providing the following:
(1) Co-Managed IT Can Reduce Routine Tasks
Co-managed IT can handle the routine tasks that scale effectively.
Specific tasks improve in quality when the scale is also increased, encompassing patch management, monitoring, alerting, problem resolution, and the entire security stack.
Entrusting menial tasks can free up the internal staff from time-consuming routine activities and enable them to focus on your core business objectives, critical projects, or strategic development.
(2) Co-Managed IT Can Provide Access to Specialized Expertise
Co-managed IT services can offer access to specialists and niche skill sets that an internal team might not be able to replicate or afford in-house.
By selectively outsourcing specific needs or augmenting internal teams with Managed Service Providers (MSPs), companies can gain access to specialized skills without incurring the full cost of hiring.
This approach, whether through full outsourcing or co-management, can relieve internal teams from resource-intensive and time-consuming technical tasks and daily IT issues.
An effective outsourced IT team continually collaborates with internal IT departments to identify gaps and provide specialized skills.
Furthermore, MSPs enhance digital security and compliance by providing measures like 24/7 monitoring, backups, and compliance support. They assist with security best practices in Microsoft 365, including Azure AD, and guide businesses on security features even without Intune. They can help with complex security compliance and advise on business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
(3) Fill Staffing Gaps During Crises
A co-managed partnership can help fill staffing gaps, for instance, after losing team members, enabling the internal IT director to rebuild the team and eventually insource functions.
If appropriately planned and executed, a co-managed internal IT relationship can reduce burnout and vitalize your operations.
MSPs can be valuable for specific, well-defined project assistance or specialized support, acting as a “force multiplier” for initiatives that the internal team may lack the bandwidth to accomplish under their current workload. This can be especially helpful when a company is growing and trying to build its internal team.
Reported Issues Related to Co-Managed IT and How to Resolve Them
Interviews with real businesses revealed that working with co-managed IT carries with it some burnout risks. This document outlines ways to address them:
(1) “Braindumping” with the MSP is viewed as additional work
Some businesses report than working with MSPs result in more work than having their internal IT team handle tasks. The additional work of the MSP provider usually involves ensuring the quality of the delivered services. Some say that playing as the “middleman” is an additional work.
Getting an MSP to work in a nuanced environment is perceived to require a “ton of brain dumping.” This causes some organizations to feel inefficient compared to hiring internally.
Another issue is the lack of clarity within the relationship. The expression “whose problem or responsibility is this anyway” in a co-managed setup is a sign that there is lack of clarity. When things go wrong, internal staff may have to spend time arguing and holding meetings to resolve issues. There’s also concern about MSPs not responding adequately, forcing the internal team to fix it anyway.
How to address these issues:
- Good contracts and policies: MSPs should develop iron-clad agreements and contracts that meticulously outline the scope of work, specific tasks, required documentation, and expected outcomes. A clearly articulated contract of engagement fosters transparency and eliminates pressure for unexpected billable hours.
- Clearly communicate and agree upon defined areas of responsibilities upfront. Ambiguously defined responsibilities will create a perception that MSPs are not responding adequately and are “more of a pain to handle.”
- Accessible documentation: An efficient MSP creates a readily accessible and understandable documentation to the client’s internal team, minimizing the need for verbal “brain dumping” when the internal team needs context or needs to troubleshoot.
(2) Lack of Understanding of the Client’s Historical and Environmental Context
Some businesses perceive that MSPs don’t truly understand or care about their specific historical environment, processes, or business goals.
When an MSP lacks contextual understanding, the internal team might need to spend considerable time explaining the “back story” and “nuanced history” of their IT setup. Then, the MSP might recommend solutions that don’t fit or perform effectively. The internal team may be required to build work packages or micromanage.
How an MSP can address this:
- Understanding the “why” of the client. A diligent MSP addresses this issue by investing significant time during onboarding and ongoing relationship management to understand the client’s unique environment, workflows, and business needs. This involves understanding the “why” behind the client’s current setup. This reduces the burden on the client to constantly educate the MSP and allow the MSP to make more relevant recommendations and perform tasks effectively.
- Shift to becoming a true partner. A desirable MSP shifts from selling a static service to becoming a true partner that aligns with the client’s goals and existing technology where feasible. An ideal MSP is open to using client tools where appropriate or providing access to relevant MSP tools to improve transparency and collaboration.
(3) Slow Response Times and Under-Delivery
MSPs can sometimes be perceived as being too slow, inflexible, operating on their own schedule or SLAs that don’t meet the business’s needs. This can require the internal staff to pick up the slack or spend time chasing the MSP, adding to their workload. Bad experiences include the MSP taking too long to respond to tickets or failure to resolve issues in a timely manner.
Many IT managers have difficulty trusting MSPs due to overselling capabilities, aggressive sales tactics but misaligned delivery, and focus on closing tickets for metrics over solving the actual problem. These trust issues lead to significant stress and paranoia for the internal team.
How to address this:
- Prioritize responsiveness and resolution. MSPs must go beyond just meeting the minimum SLAs. They should aim for prompt initial responses and efficient resolution times that meet or exceed client expectations. This requires adequate staffing and processes to handle the workload. This may also require adapting processes to fit the client’s workflow where reasonable, rather than enforcing a rigid “MSP way”.
- Ensure Adequate Staffing: Being understaffed and having burnt-out employees directly impacts response times and service quality. MSPs need enough skilled technical resources and should prioritize staff well-being to ensure they are not overwhelmed.
- Implement Proactive Monitoring: Proactive monitoring and detection can help MSPs identify and begin addressing issues before the client even reports them, demonstrating a high level of responsiveness and control.
- Streamline Internal Processes: Efficient ticket handoff procedures and clear role separation can prevent delays caused by administrative overhead or assigning tasks outside of a tech’s primary function
Microsoft Platform to Reduce Burnout
Microsoft 365 serves as a platform that can reduce burnout. It plays a crucial role in digital transformation, providing tools such as SharePoint, Teams, and Copilot.
While these tools improve collaboration and productivity, navigating the Microsoft ecosystem and licensing can be intricate. Optimizing tenant environments can be complex which includes managing permissions (e.g., cleaning up per-user permissions in SharePoint) and keeping up with changes that add to the internal IT workload.
These intricate tasks involved in managing the Microsoft environment can add pressure to the support staff. This is where outsourcing or co-managed IT can assist.
MSPs can play a vital role in helping businesses navigate the challenges of digital transformation.
MSPs can provide expertise in Microsoft technologies, including guidance on Microsoft 365 apps and emerging technologies like Copilot.
They can help organizations understand their Microsoft licenses and tailor features for optimal use.
Keeping up with Office 365 changes and managing adds/moves/changes is seen as “a necessary evil” that makes sense to outsource to an MSP with a strong focus on that area.
In summary, while the concept of co-managed IT aims to reduce burnout by offloading work and providing expertise, its success heavily depends on establishing clear responsibilities, building trust and transparency, and having a competent and well-managed MSP partner with aligned incentives. Without these elements, co-managed IT is often perceived by internal IT managers as increasing their burden and stress due to management overhead, lack of reliability, and concerns about job security.
