How to Improve
the Work Life of an IT Professional
INTRODUCTION
When you first started out as an IT professional, you must have been incredibly excited and raring to help as many people as you possibly could. But a few years of managing IT and dealing with IT issues all day, you now think of your end users as the devil’s spawn and get easily agitated with every new request that comes your way. What’s even more frustrating for you is your management’s complete lack of empathy towards you and your time. You don’t enjoy your weekends because you’re thinking about tickets piling up and you go home angry every day wondering why you simply can’t catch a break.
If you can relate, then this eBook is exactly what you need. We’ll explore the daily work-life struggles of sysadmins such as yourself and the effective strategies you can implement to overcome them. Since the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made life increasingly difficult for IT admins all around the world, this couldn’t have come at a better time for you.
But before we look at the possible solutions that could make your work life better, here are a few examples of common sysadmin issues you might have already encountered.
Have You Faced These Challenges?
While the struggles of home distractions and lack of camaraderie with co-workers are major challenges in this remote-working world, critical issues like unrealistic work expectations and lack of proper tools to handle your work can bring you to the brink of frustration and beyond.
Do any of these sound familiar?
Massive workloads
Most IT people around the world can relate to this right now. Your phone keeps blowing up at one end and tickets keep piling up at the other as end users face new issues every other day when working from home. Everyone wants you to prioritize their issues and everyone thinks their work is more important than yours.
With many organizations facing financial crunches in this new normal, some organizations are merging two jobs into one, leaving you to do more with less, especially during a critical time such as this.
Unrealistic expectations
Does your management have unrealistic expectations of you? Do you often get pulled into absurd conversations where everything is blamed on the IT for lack of productivity? What you once did as a favor has now become a part of your everyday routine. And if you don’t already have your plate full, new requests keep popping up all the time as employees try and figure out the nuances of remote work.
Routine issues with no clear source
Your end user may raise a ticket complaining about a slow system, for example. However, when it comes to remote work, zeroing in on the source of such an issue can be an uphill task. Is it due to a bad network connection? Is someone else sharing the same bandwidth? Is the end user using the office computer for personal use? Is it due to faulty hardware? Is there any malware in the device? You need to take many factors into consideration before even attempting to solve something that should be fairly straightforward.
End users just refuse to learn:
Have you ever wondered how an expert programmer highly skilled in a programming language can’t manage a simple file system? Or can’t take a printout? Or can’t stop clicking on a spam link? As you probably already know, end users aren’t exactly stupid. However, many of them actively refuse to learn. Even if you educate them, they may simply be unwilling to learn or will do their best to resist making these tasks a part of their daily schedule.
Technology limitations:
End users of IT just want their applications to perform at their best all the time. It requires a lot of technology to continuously monitor an entire IT infrastructure and make it work seamlessly. If your company does not provide you with the right tools, you could be easily overwhelmed with new tickets and service requests. Ever since this massive, unexpected shift to remote work came about, most organizations have faced technological limitations when it comes to facilitating remote work on a large scale.
Do people still fall for this?
It’s hard to fathom that people are still falling for the Nigerian Prince scam emails in this day and age. You will be surprised to know that this age-old, advance-fee scam has taken away $700,000 in 2018 from the United States alone.1 New-age phishing emails can mimic an authority figure or key person in a company and ask the user to click a link. Naive users still click on these links and allow cybercriminals to steal valuable business information from organizations. At the end of the day, the blame falls on you, the IT, for not being proactive enough to prevent this.
Roles and responsibilities:
IT people from every corner of the world can relate to taking up non-IT responsibilities at some point in their careers. If you work for a small MSP or IT department that does not have specialized roles, you’re probably nodding your head in agreement as you read this.
Anything that gets plugged into the wall and doesn’t work seems to be an IT problem. Has someone ever contacted you because the coffee machine isn’t working? Consider yourself lucky if this hasn’t happened to you yet but don’t rule out the possibility of it happening in the future.
Technology to the Rescue
Most of these IT challenges can be incredibly frustrating but that doesn’t mean there can be no relief from them. A significant number of your everyday IT challenges can be overcome with the help of the right tools and technology. If you are not in control of procuring these tools, you should push your management to get you the right tools to better manage your IT.
Here’s how you can improve your work life with the right IT management tools:
Automation is moving at a dramatic pace in the IT industry. One of the most recent automation innovations – Automation Workflows – has revolutionized IT by allowing technicians to automatically perform remediation actions by choosing the trigger and configuring the actions to be taken. This feature comes with the Pulseway RMM app and frees up technicians from wasting their time on mundane IT tasks.
Remote Control
This has become a critical requirement in today’s remote working scenario. Technicians need to access remote user sessions as if they are sitting in front of the endpoint. Moreover, it should also allow for built-in communication with the end user. This feature allows you to instantly resolve IT issues from anywhere, anytime, from the comfort of your smartphone or laptop.
Cloud Storage
Cloud storage has become an essential component of data management in this remote working environment. It provides organizations with a secure way of backing up their valuable data. In addition to boosting data security, it also enables remote workers to retrieve their data whenever they want.
Patch Management
In this age of evolving cyberthreats, you need a powerful patching solution that keeps all your software up to date. It was estimated that 60 percent of data breaches in 2019 could be attributed to unpatched software.2 Considering that the chances of this happening in a remote working environment are significantly higher, you always need to be a step ahead when it comes to patching.
Mobile Support
When it comes to managing IT, you must look for a mobile-first solution that allows you to access your IT environment from anywhere, anytime. This lets you effectively manage IT even if you are on-the-go with no access to your work laptop. If you have mobile-based tools, you have a clear advantage when it comes to remotely monitoring your IT.
Integrated RMM
What’s the point of having multiple solutions if you cannot integrate them properly on a unified platform? When you integrate these solutions in your RMM, you can save a lot of time switching between different solutions and boost your efficiency. Moreover, this also allows you to manage your time more effectively without wasting it on redundant tasks.
When you have the right tools and technology at your disposal, you can save yourself from a lot of headaches caused by routine IT challenges.
Best Practices That Make Life Easy for IT Professionals
While technology can help you to a great extent in terms of solving your everyday problems and improving your work life, we are aware that not everything can be solved with technology alone. Some of your everyday challenges require creative solutions that need help from your end users, peers and management.
Here is a list of best practices that could make your life easy in the IT world:
By incorporating new technology, such as Automation Workflows, you can solve some tricky problems when it comes to managing workloads. However, you might still need the help of your peers and your IT administrators. Make sure you reach out to them at the right time when you need help. Don’t wait until the last minute for them to help you. You need to stay in touch with your team members and keep them informed of your activities, especially in these times of remote work.
Prioritize work with planning tools like Trello
At times, you may get overwhelmed with multiple tasks. This is when you need to learn to prioritize tasks based on their severity. For instance, a patching update that affects the security of an entire organization is much more important than a ticket for a ‘slow system’ raised by an end user. You need to take up important tasks first and use planning tools like Trello to keep yourself and your team updated on the progress of tasks.
Manage expectations
While dealing with both end users as well as the management can be a tough job, sysadmins must learn the right way of managing expectations in their work environments. If someone comes to you with non-IT requests, you need to alert your managers right away. If you make a habit of entertaining these requests, they could very well become a part of your everyday routine. Don’t fall for this. Communication with your managers is key, especially with regards to what is expected from you.
Allocate buffer time for tasks
When working on one task, always make sure you have extra time on hand to make sure it doesn’t affect your next set of tasks. If you finish early, you can simply start your next task early. It is never a good idea to overpromise and underdeliver. Always ask for a reasonable timeframe and a little extra time as well just to make sure you have enough time to finish a task if you run into unexpected problems.
Set up a consistent maintenance schedule
With a periodic maintenance schedule, you can constantly monitor your IT environment and proactively assess issues. You need to check your system for your backup devices, hardware quality, connectivity issues, patch releases, etc. When you have a consistent schedule to monitor these issues, you can prevent them from causing downtime and affecting productivity.
Allocate time for end-user training
Depending on your organization, this process could be relatively easy or extremely difficult. However, this is something that should be done consistently. When the end users are fairly tech-competent, many of your everyday issues can be avoided. Your training doesn’t always have to be a classroom session. You can write a blog or create a list of IT ‘dos and don’ts’ and share it through email. You can even come up with unconventional training methods, like sending fake spam messages, to identify the naive users in your organization and provide them with specialized training.
You could also a create a cybersecurity quiz to filter out users who need additional training. Maybe even conduct a session every now and then to listen to common issues the end users face and train them on how to solve them.
Take time to disconnect from technology
Last but certainly not the least, always take time to disconnect from technology. Always be reachable when something goes south but don’t prioritize work over your personal time. Once you are done with work, turn off your work phone and focus on something that does not concern technology at all – like reading a book. The more overwhelmed you are with work, the more you will start to hate your job. Make sure you don’t get to a point where your everyday work life seems like a struggle.
Most organizations have high expectations when it comes to the performance of their sysadmins. You need to constantly hone your skills to make sure you are always on top of your game. At the same time, follow these tips to become a highly effective sysadmin with a proper work-life balance.
