Incident Management Improvements Fail Without The Right Personnel Training

Successful incident management starts with putting the right processes in place. Creating this structure is crucial to building a responsive IT service desk that can quickly respond to issues, limiting downtime.

Once the proper procedures have been put in place, training for all members of the IT organization must follow.

Develop The Right Training

Because people ultimately determine the success of an IT service desk, you need a consistent and ongoing training process. The work is highly varied, and a good service desk requires a blend of technical, business and soft skills.

As an IT incident manager, it’s important to develop staff in different ways. You may want to move people around to match their skills with the right position on the service desk.

Provide Training In Technology And Soft Skills

In general, you’ll have highly skilled IT team members on the second and third lines. Their primary focus is root cause analysis of issues and process improvement, in addition to IT maintenance work as needed.

People on the first line are typically young and early in their careers. Avoid the temptation to be too protectionist with these team members. Attrition rates are usually high here, because some people naturally choose to change careers or seek work opportunities elsewhere.

Some first-line employees, however, will love the work and the broad range of skills they develop. You should nurture and grow such team members, as their communication skills in particular can play a key role in bridging the gap between the business and IT.

First-line team members do require some technical training. Although these people don’t need detailed knowledge of databases, they should understand how a database functions and the way it relates to the bigger IT picture. They also must know how issues impact the organization, so they can accurately judge the severity.

Invest In All Levels Of Your Support Team

Especially when it comes to first-line employees, management may deem investing in training to be too expensive and unnecessary. That’s a big mistake, because these team members are highly valuable to the organization.

You shouldn’t try to take a manufacturing approach to training, as IT service management has too many complex people-related challenges for a rigid training protocol to be successful. However, you do need training and resource planning to build a strong IT service desk.

To learn more about how process improvements can improve your IT incident management, download our new eBook, “Streamlining IT Service Desk Incident Management: 3 Process Changes To Make Now.”

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