Many Akron-area businesses rely on a small internal IT team to keep systems running. But when that team is juggling help desk tickets, vendor management, security strategy, emergency response, and more, they can start to feel overloaded. Over time, that burnout will have a direct impact on your business operations.
Luckily, there are steps you can take to support overloaded IT teams and keep your business running smoothly. Here are the signs your internal technology team is overloaded and what you can do about it.
Key takeaways
- Common signs of an overloaded internal technology team include delays, reactive work, and unfinished projects.
- Constant firefighting usually means the team does not have enough time for strategy, security, or process improvement.
- IT overload hurts the employee experience, increases security risks, and makes it more difficult for your business to grow.
- Co-managed IT support can reduce the pressure without replacing your internal IT staff.
- A proactive IT strategy helps businesses support internal IT teams before overload leads to bigger problems.
Signs your internal technology team is overloaded
IT burnout doesn’t happen all at once. It often starts with one missed deadline or simple operational mistake, but snowballs into bigger challenges that your team can’t overcome. It’s also very common. A study by GoTo and OnePoll found that 58% of IT workers feel overwhelmed with their daily responsibilities.
If your business catches IT overload early on, you can step in to correct it before it spirals out of control. Here are some early warning signs that your IT department is overloaded.
Support tickets keep piling up
When employees file support tickets, they often have to wait hours or even days for help, even if it’s a routine issue. This bottleneck could be an indication that your IT team is understaffed.
When this happens, your IT team has to spend most of its time reacting to problems. This leaves very little time left over for important strategy or maintenance work.
Strategic projects keep getting delayed
Responding to help desk tickets is just one small part of your IT team’s job. They’re also responsible for things like infrastructure upgrades, cloud planning, cybersecurity improvements, and IT documentation.
If your IT team keeps putting these tasks on the calendar, but has to push them back to deal with urgent day-to-day operations, that’s a red flag. If you don’t have enough time for these long-term strategic projects, it could put your business at risk.
One or two people know too much
Many overloaded IT teams rely primarily on one or two team members. Rather than having a balanced IT team, these individuals have critical systems knowledge and vendor relationships that no one else does.
This means that when someone takes a sick day, goes on vacation, or simply gets pulled into a meeting, the rest of the team’s productivity plummets. If one of these IT leaders leaves the company, you’ll have to spend months retraining someone else, making it difficult to achieve your goals.
The team is always in firefighting mode
If your IT team always seems busy and overwhelmed, no matter what they’re working on, that’s a sign that things aren’t working as intended and need to change. This is often an indication that the IT environment is not stable and the team doesn’t have time to fix the root causes of problems, so the same issues happen over and over again.
Security work is getting less attention
Security work like patch management, permissions reviews, data backups, and systems monitoring are all key to protecting your company from security threats. However, when IT teams are stretched too thin, these tasks tend to fall by the wayside.
Why internal technology teams get overloaded
There are many reasons why IT teams get overloaded. By addressing these issues at the source, you can prevent burnout before it negatively impacts your business.
The business has grown faster than IT support
When companies grow rapidly, they don’t always expand the IT team accordingly. This growth leaves IT staff juggling a sharp increase in users, devices, locations, and security needs, even if they don’t have the resources or bandwidth to handle it. In this situation, the IT strategy needs to be reworked before the business can continue to grow.
Internal IT owns too many responsibilities
IT teams are often expected to handle a wide range of responsibilities, including tech support, cybersecurity, vendor management, strategic planning, and purchasing new technologies—just to name a few.
Even if your IT team is strong, there are only so many hours in the workday, and it’s difficult to keep up with such a long list of tasks. This is where a third-party managed service provider can be helpful. Third-party support providers can take on tasks like system monitoring, help desk services, or even security strategy if your team is feeling overwhelmed.
Leadership sees IT mainly as support
IT overload often happens when organizational leadership sees the IT team primarily as a support function, rather than a strategic partner. Leaders may underestimate the amount of support and resources an IT team needs to succeed. This can lead to understaffing, high turnover, and confusion around IT priorities.
To fix this problem, leadership will need to work with IT managers to set realistic expectations and allocate resources appropriately. This may mean hiring more internal team members or outsourcing some tasks to an MSP. Investing in your IT team now can lead to smoother operations and more business success later on.
The environment was never fully standardized
In many cases, burnout happens as a result of IT infrastructure that’s outdated or overly complex. Older systems often require more troubleshooting than new systems, which slows IT teams down.
Even if your systems are updated, you might encounter problems if they’re inconsistent. Creating standard practices for server configuration, data backups, and other infrastructure management tasks can help you work more efficiently.
The business risks of an overloaded IT team
When your IT team is overloaded, it has a trickle-down effect on your entire business. Here are some of the biggest risks of having an overloaded IT team.
More downtime and recurring issues
Overloaded IT teams often struggle with recurring technical issues that cause downtime for your entire business. Since the IT team doesn’t have time to address underlying systemic issues, the same problems happen over and over again. Both employees and customers get frustrated with frequent downtime, and productivity drops.
Higher security exposure
When IT teams are busy, they don’t always have time to handle preventative cybersecurity tasks. This leaves your organization more vulnerable to data breaches, cyberattacks, and other avoidable incidents.
These incidents can be financially devastating to your organization. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach affecting multiple environments is $4.4 million.
Poorer employee experience
Employees rely on your internal IT team for support when things go wrong. However, when IT teams are overloaded, they can’t respond to support tickets as quickly. This limits productivity and makes daily work even harder for your team. Because of this, your employees may lose confidence in your IT team, which can affect morale.
Slower business growth
New business initiatives often depend on reliable IT support. For example, if you want to launch a new product or install a new software platform, you’ll need IT experts to help with that.
If your IT team is already overwhelmed, they won’t be able to help with growth initiatives. Over time, this can cause your business to stagnate.
Support your Akron-area technology team more effectively
Even when your IT staff is capable and committed, they can’t do their best work if they’re feeling overloaded. When teams are overwhelmed, they get stuck in support mode, leaving very little time for necessary strategic work.
If you notice your Akron IT team is struggling to keep up with demand, it’s important to find solutions to prevent the problem from getting worse. One way is to partner with a managed services provider like Keystone Technology Consultants to take time-consuming tasks off your plate. At Keystone Technology Consultants, we provide expertise and support to help your internal IT teams thrive.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help.
FAQs
What are the most common signs an internal technology team is overloaded?
Common signs that an IT team is overloaded include growing ticket backlogs, delayed response times, recurring downtime, and over-reliance on one or two people. These signs also indicate that long-term maintenance, security, and documentation aren’t getting done.
Does an overloaded IT team always mean staff are underperforming?
No. In many cases, IT teams are strong, but they get overloaded because they have too many responsibilities and not enough resources.
How can co-managed IT help an internal technology team?
Co-managed IT can add capacity and provide specialized expertise to help internal IT staff. In particular, MSPs can handle help desk overflow, security needs, infrastructure maintenance, and project work. This leaves internal teams free to handle high-priority tasks.
