How to Build an IT Support Plan for Hybrid Work
Written By: BOSS Editorial
Reading Time: 3 minutes
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns challenged all kinds of conventional logic. For example, the old IT support models and the hybrid teams that have endured since the lockdown make it difficult to walk over to the IT desk. In the absence of such informal pathways to get appropriate IT support, it’s essential to have a clear support workflow in place.
Map Critical Workflows
Start by listing the systems that your business simply can’t run without. For example, consider the following essential services:
- Payroll
- Internet Connection
- Business-Specific Apps
You should rank each of these by how much damage an outage would cause, and the most problematic of these should be the ones that get the most support.
Companies like Terminal B managed IT services experts, can help your organization to figure things out at this key stage.
Define Role-Based Service Level Agreements
Not every issue has the same response time requirement, so you should set up service level agreements based on factors like role at the company and the impact of a system going down. If someone’s laptop freezes while they’re responsible for running the payroll system, that’s something that needs a much faster fix than a visual glitch in an internal wiki system. When working with managed IT services experts, you should write out a formal service level agreement so the expectations are clear.
Lock Down Your Network
The biggest attack surface that cybercriminals can exploit is your remote endpoints. The solution is to require multi-factor authentication on your accounts and to track company devices in a management tool that’s capable of pushing updates and remotely wiping lost hardware. CISA’s telework guidance is a useful reference for securing the expanded network perimeter that hybrid work creates.
Set Clear Escalation Priorities
For handling outages, IT support staff should have clearly defined roles, to the point that when key systems go down, everyone knows exactly who is responsible, and the person who is responsible has some kind of plan of action in place. Taking a risk-based view of which systems matter most helps you decide what gets escalated first when several things break at once.
Plan for After-Hours Support
Hybrid work often means people working across time zones or odd hours, so you should have a plan in place for tech support outside of local office hours. You also need to decide what’s urgent enough to be considered by the after-hours support team. For some teams, round-the-clock support from a provider is the simplest way to cover those gaps.
Decide In-House or Outsourced
At some point, you’ll need to decide whether to handle these difficulties internally or bring in managed IT services. Given the difficulty of keeping up with the latest threats and techniques for most companies, it makes sense to use managed IT services so that you can focus on your core business.
Ready to go deeper? Explore the cybersecurity coverage on BOSS Magazine to see how other leaders are tackling the same hybrid-era pressures.
