Let’s face the truth. No employee is going to work for you at Service Desk for a long period of time. Even if you have, it is a rare feat. Long period here means something like 3 years and beyond. If you have noticed, Service Desk is akin to a lightning rod. You always takes the first, hardest, most painful strike; while protecting the every entity you work for, you are generally not given a proper recognition of the sufferings you and your team go through. It’s a fact, it is widely known but more often that not, management considers that a job they paid you for.
Given the high dynamic forces of incidents at attack you and your team, day and night, relentless as the sun rises and sets, human beings on Service Desk experiences burnouts. Wikipedia defines burnout as “a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest (depersonalization or cynicism), usually in the work context” and further suggests that it is a “result of a period of expending too much effort at work while having too little recovery“. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Of course it does; it’s referring to your working environment. It is said that the average lifespan of a Service Desk professional is 18 months. That’s a short 1.5 years. Based on my experience, this assumption seems to be holding water.
So far, I have been assuming that Service Desk professional may leave you because of a highly stressed environment but that doesn’t discount the fact that people may leave the organisation for better pay, better benefits, career advancement, current bitchy boss, horrible clientele and a whole lot of other reasons.
When a key staff resigns, it is most attributed to burnouts. The longest key staff I had is 3 years and she’s leaving for a same pay, less stressful work. I can’t blame her because my team is truly the global lightning rod for my organisation. We always get hit the hardest. In this kind of situation, what would you have done? The first response that any manager would make is to counteroffer whatever she is getting elsewhere. In my humble opinion, that would only prolong her for a little while longer. It’s not a permanent solution and you will continue to face such situations.
This is where foundation of your Service Desk is important. It’s a long road to the illusive perfection; a long road to have your team work like a clock. Things that need to be done are:
- Be process oriented – like a clock, have your team move at their own gears’ pace; everyone share the same goal, the same function, the same rotation and everyone knows when to chime. This can only happen when you have standard operating procedures and standard methodologies.
- Document documents – for everything that your staff does, have it documented and verified. Verification is simple; have a layman do what the document says. If the layman is able to obtain the expected results, the document should pass with flying colours.
- Identify alternates – no one should be the sole custodian to a process. Make sure there is at least another person who is able to perform the same function.
- Panic – If you do not have 1, 2 & 3, offer your resigning staff and start working on 1, 2 & 3.
When you have the necessary in place, you should not fear when a key staff resigns. It’s part of life and you are prepared for such a change.