The company IT department has been through the ringer ever since they split from Davisco, and it's going again. Mass layoffs just hit, and the parts of IT that are reeling from them are the ones that were understaffed to begin with, not to mention some of the best performing employees were let go.
"Job Descriptions" aren't accurate. Everything will ultimately fall to the Help Desk's responsibility (Was 8 people, now is 4. Supporting over 2000 employees, with little backup.) When positions were terminated (Mobile Support Coordinator, Security Administrator) the tasks were all dumped on Help Desk rather unceremoniously. Never mind the fact that they usually fell to individual people on the team, so suddenly employees were expected to fufill an 80-hour-week work load in a 45-hour week.
There are a large amount of Project Managers all managing resources for their projects - sometimes 3-4 projects all at once. All of those project managers have been pulling Help Desk employees and Infrastructure employees into all of their projects. While the number advertised was 3-4 projects per PM, the reality for Help Desk or Infrastructure is 10-15 projects per person. Tier 3 Desktop support is fufilling Project Management duties on work deemed "Too big to be an incident, but not big enough to be a full-fledged Project.
Teams are held to SLAs which can't be maintained because the teams are too available and prone to interruption. Users can submit tickets through the portal, but they will either call in to skip the wait on a ticket, or just walk in to someone's cube and demand instant service. The company can't be expected to follow the ticketing process, because IT Leadership can't. And anytime someone flagged as a "VIP" submits a ticket, they get a free pass to skip the queue, because those get flagged and emails go out to leadership, who immediately will go assign someone to skip their ticket queue and address the issue.
The Help Desk has been requesting additional employees for a year now, but has always been turned down. "The Department is full. We're at capacity. We don't need more people, we need a better process." - this has become an endless cycle, something to the tune of this:
"We need more people."
"We don't need more people, we need to be more efficient."
"We're implementing this new process to make us more efficient."
"We need to learn this before we can effectively implement it."
"We'll just do it and learn it as we go, we will get more efficient with time."
We attempt the new process. After a long time of learning it and the process slowing us down, we learn the new process, implement it, and wind up no more efficient than we were, but now behind because we had to learn the new way to do it.
"We need more people."
"We don't need more people, we need to be more efficient"
Repeat ad nauseam.
The sales office has chewed through 3 people who were working there alone, and requests for a secondary support technician have been declined, despite the fact that 2 years ago we HAD 2 technicians there, but "It's just not necessary."
EVPs and Directors within the business will wait for IT to screw up somehow, no matter how minor, and will blow it out of proportion.
There is no formal Advancement plan. Most promotions within the company were high up to higher up. If you didn't repeatedly chase down people for promotions, or threaten to quit, you don't get promoted. If you mention it but don't aggressively pursue it, you get lip service and a carrot on a stick. If you wish to better yourself, a lynda.com subscription is offered as an afterthought to "personal growth." Halogen is used to track personal growth, performance reviews, etc. but that's all done by "Attaining Goals that benefit the company." - It's not about growing as an employee, it's about doing your own company project in your "Free time".
Pay isn't competitive, though they try to be. Leadership brought in more competitive pay for new hires, but didn't come close to balancing anything for the people that were hired on during the "Old Regime" - anywhere in the department.
Benefits are dismal - Bare Minimum Health insurance that the CEO has said 'He doesn't believe he should have to pay for them, as people would be more responsible if they had to pay for their own." No dental. No vision. 401K takes forever to kick in and fully match 4%.
Work Life Balance was pushed heavily with the leadership, but many employees can't keep it with the company demands. The Help desk closed 24850 tickets last year in 8 Months. among 10 people. With new sites standing up and the company appearing to be on a growing trend, the expectation is that number will only rise. Many team members are being worked to burnout hours.
Lack of formal documentation means employees that quit or are fired take the knowledge with them, leaving the rest to pick up the pieces. The Help Desk Supervisor was canned in the layoffs - in the middle of implementing a process for getting a formal Knowledgebase completed. Leadership sold out their backing on it.
The Department's Tenets: "Better Together. Assume Positive Intent. Make the Commitment, Keep the Commitment" belong in either a Business Managerial class or in a grade school, not an IT Department.
