Work situation.

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi guys.

I am part of a team of 3 people in my current i.t dept, public sector, school.

We have '1 network admin' and '2 desktop support' staff. We have over 950 pc's including approx 200 laptops and other devices such as printers, av equipment etc. Only the 2 desktop support actually provide assistance on the desktop support side of things on the network with only very little help from the network admin when he has time.

The system runs ok but sometimes feel like a 3rd desktop support tech would be good, to give an extra hand so to speak. R we short staffed compared to other people in the public or private sector?

FatP

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

should be about 50-1

Grim

 

The company I work for has 3, (myself included),

we as the support team provide for a few companies, but only one is FULL support (thats everything, networks, helpdesk the lot) the others are mostly Network support, which we have ONE guy support (he would be our 3rd line)

around 250 systems we support fully, a couple of small clients call up once in a blue moon, and one of the major ones drop tickets are some 2nd/3rd line support once a day or whatever.

I would say you're probably just on the point where your rushed but not beyond belief, if you can handle the work then no one else needs to be brought in.

Believe me, having nothing to do is never a good thing.

 

Based on that number of PC's I'd say that yes you are perhaps understaffed.

Generally in schools I would base the ratio of PC's:Support Staff at 150:1. That said however it largely depends on the infrastructure that you have in place, do you have any Management interface inplace, i.e. Ranger / RM? how stable it is, what other projects you are involved with, i.e whiteboards, projectors, etc.

If you are both constantly having to do running around sorting desktop issues out then perhaps there is an underlying cause, i.e bad infrastructure.

 

Mmm in my first I.T. job I was the only guy which was purely meant to do 'I.T. Stuff'. Above me was my manager who was also manager of 5 departments and a high 'ranking' member of the company. The other chap worked part time and did mainly reports on Crystal and database side things (he had also been in I.T. for 40 years in various roles up to a senior director for a multi national company). So basically two vary knowledgeable guys who were also both responsible for I.T. support. On top of this we had an I.T. support company.

Ok end of my novel there. Down to the point, we had probs max 50 pc's. 14 laptops spread across the U.K. and 4 pc's (spread across the U.K. as the sales force). Had 7 servers and printers etc etc. So basically over I.T. supported :P

Now compare this to your secondary school..I reckon another worker would be best? Surely it would beneficial for you to advertise a cheapo position to Universities offering years out in industry? Maybe even a part time role...Speak to your line manager and get your department evaluated or something? Could even write to governors/smt?

In my new school their is apparently 1200 users + 600-700 pcs/laptops etc with a full time network manager, a full time tech and I will be their first third tech. Sounds about right to me with NM and two techs.

In my current part time role I have 50 pc's, 20 laptops, 14 whiteboards, 4 networked printers, website, for that I had 8 hours support a week which has now gone up to 15.

 

We have 12,000 Users and 25 Support Staff, our equation sits at 480:1.