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Our IT department is somewhat notorious for being rather unresponsive. A lot of our company works remotely now, so it's generally easier to ignore emails and chat messages requesting support.

I occasionally run into IT-related issues that I can't resolve on my own, e.g., not having permission to do something. This could probably be fixed in a few minutes.

I'll typically send a message to IT, which I know they've read because I can see the read receipt, and then not hear anything back. Then I have to keep chasing them, I keep being ignored, and eventually might possibly get somewhere, but sometimes the issue isn't fully resolved.

I have raised this several times to my manager; I've done the typical things like recording how much time was wasted on our project due to IT issues (quite a lot), being straightforward in saying that I'm not happy with our IT department, but the response I usually get is that "your concern has been noted" and excuses like "they're busy." Ok, but we're all busy, and it's literally their job to provide IT support.

What I want to know is: What suggestions can I give to my manager for ways to improve our IT department's responsiveness and willingness to follow through on commitments? Currently there's not really any formal support system; we just message IT as required. I've thought about a ticketing system, but I know that comes with its own problems, like tickets being ignored or closed prematurely.

If they are genuinely too busy to respond, then given that this always seems to be the case, surely something isn't working and needs to be addressed?

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  • I'm not sure if we can give helpful suggestions when we don't know what the problem is with IT. Does your manager actually manage the IT Department as well or otherwise have the power to make them change their processes?
    – BSMP
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 10:03
  • Why do you care? Looks like everyone in the organisation is in the same boat, and your manager doesn't seem to care enough to be making waves about the issue? You should just try to parallise your work as much as possible, and anticipate blockers.
    – Gregory Currie
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 11:20

2 Answers 2

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What suggestions can I give to my manager for ways to improve our IT department's responsiveness and willingness to follow through on commitments? Currently there's not really any formal support system; we just message IT as required. I've thought about a ticketing system, but I know that comes with its own problems, like tickets being ignored or closed prematurely.

A good ticketing system, along with formal ticketing and follow up processes is the right solution.

If your manager is in charge of IT, they could implement it. If not, your manager could talk to whoever could actually make it happen.

Relying on chat messages, emails, and phone calls is the wrong way.

If they are genuinely too busy to respond, then given that this always seems to be the case, surely something isn't working and needs to be addressed?

Probably something needs to be addressed. What that something is depends on the nature of the help requests.

It might mean that more IT staff is needed, coverage hours need to be expanded, etc. It might mean that systems/processes need to be replaced so that they don't need as much manual intervention from IT. It might mean that IT folks need more training, in order to get their work done more efficiently.

But it might mean that non-IT folks need more training on how to resolve some issues themselves.

A good ticketing system can expose what kinds of issues are happening, and help the company learn what to do about them.

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    Good answer. As you say, a ticketing system may not solve the problems, but it will allow you to identify what they are. It boggles the mind that people discount systems that are designed to overcome weaknesses of traditional email.
    – Gregory Currie
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 11:19
  • The only thing missing from this answer is "SLAs". Defining a service-level agreement for how long it will take IT to look at and respond to an issue (which may not include fixing the problem). A good ticketing system would allow the IT team to track things like how long it takes to make the initial response, to categorize issues, to track severity of issues, and record how long it takes to resolve based on category and severity. Having that data would be useful for defining current SLAs and figuring out if they need to improve.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 11:21
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    @ThomasOwens I think the concept of SLAs doesn't really apply here. It's understandable that the IT team may have targets to meet (which is usually part of a SLA), but it's unlikely that the IT team is going for form contracts with other business units within the same organisation. It's just overkill.
    – Gregory Currie
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 11:45
  • @GregoryCurrie At least in large organizations, the IT departments I've worked with do have SLAs. Questions? 3 business days to assign to the right team, then 10 business days initial response time from the team that supports the tool. Provisioning a new user in the system? 5 business days from submission. Different systems are also categorized for restoration. Critical systems have 24/7 support for system-down priority issues.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 12:37
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The problem isn't IT. They don't care, there has never been repercussions for them so they have no reason to change. The problem is your manager is not doing their job, the manager doesn't need advice, there's a myriad of ways to solve it. They just need to do their job. So make them do it and don't just document the IT's failings.

You work through the hierarchy. Anytime you contact IT you include your manager. Then you follow up whenever you need to, also including your manager.

If it doesn't solve the problem. Then this makes it very clear to the manager that IT support is slack on the job and disrespecting them, without you needing to do a single thing or get into any sort of conflict or teach your manager their job. And the onus is then on them to do something about it (because that IS part of their role).

This is the normal procedure in many places for exactly this reason.

While a manager might fob you off with platitudes on the rare occasions you inform them. It's a different story if they're in the middle of it because firstly it's their role and it's annoying. And secondly it leaves a paper trail of them doing zilch if it's ever needed in the future.

It's best to make people to do their jobs properly and get into conflicts with each other, while you just quietly and professionally do your tasks and leave them to it.

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    Before including your manager with all correspondence, you should really ask them if they want you to. It also gives you cover if you are asked why you're looping in your manager: "My manager said they would like to kept in the loop".
    – Gregory Currie
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 11:51
  • @GregoryCurrie you don't ask them anything, if people not doing their job is impacting on your performance you just quietly force them and act vaguely surprised if they complain (why wouldn't your manager want to be in the loop?). In this case a paper trail is a good idea, so make one.
    – Kilisi
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 11:55

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