IT Worker-to-User Ratio Survey?

Breid asks: "This year has definitely been a career nightmare for IT pros. Our own company has seen our staff trimmed to near nothing and frankly, the workload is beginning to stretch people to the breaking point. With performance reviews coming up I want to make some statements to upper management concerning personnel and compensation. You can find plenty of salary surveys, but I haven't seen statements regarding the size of staff involved. And IMHO, workers on a 5 person staff supporting 200 need some compensation adjustment vs a 20 person staff supporting the same user base. At this point (for all of you still employed), what's the IT worker to workstation ratio look like? Or is anyone aware of any statistical data compiled about this?"

Comments

Re:Right now where I work.

[GigsVT]

Yeah, but to have this survey mean anything, we would need to know how much you got paid, and where you live, (at least general area).

metrics

[mindserfer]

Raw numbers are hard to compare;
other factors can cause the need for more people include:

1) really old machines
2) complex and/or special user software
3) bleading edge tech
4) really slow users
5) etc

these factors should be included in any stats

overworked?

[Kevin Stevens]

I dont know exactly what you or your company does, so maybe you guys need more support than the average company, but it does not appear that you guys should be stretched 'to the breaking point.' You guys should be MAKING time to make your processes more efficient, and clamping down the machines a bit tighter so that users can not screw them up so often. Also, do not be afraid to say no to fixing a pesky problem if there are larger issues at hand ( like spending time automating things). If you guys are spending your whole day putting out fires, then there is a larger problem. I also dont know what the culture or general intelligence is like at your company, but if it is anything like the places where I have worked where all the training is to be paid for by money out of my pocket and on my own out of work time, then propogate that attitude down to the users. Make them figure out how to install the printer drivers, or fix a paper jam, or put up a sign sign explaining what 'PC Load Letter' means next to the fax machine. I am sure someone knows how to do these things, and they can use the 'ask a neighbor' system to take care of these tedious things.

Just one perspective

[Strange Ranger]

In my experience

2 Support staff / 50 users = Happy productive users, proactive support, bliss. Environment stays ahead of the upgrade curve. Support staff has time to understand current business practices and provide value-added enhancements.

1 Support staff / 50 users = Users OK, support staff fights fires big and small at a good pace. Environment stays fairly static, but current enough.

1 support staff / 100 users = users angry, less productive, small fires get ignored. Training and proactive support is only a dream.

With that said, 5 people for 200 users is 1 support staff per 40 users. That's not so bad! Are these people all doing the same job? Are the 200 divided among different departments? If so maybe you can each take your own 40 or so users in 1 or 2 departments as "Primary" and the other 160 as secondary. If you can divide them by business function and develop closer relationships by each concentrating on 40 people, your job will likely get easier. At least it will get more rewarding as the same 40 people come to rely on you and respect you more and more. Not only that, but you get to know your users better and decide which users to teach instead of just fix every time. This works great if you have good people. In the past I have more than doubled my "free" time by including 5 minutes of training with every support call. After a while they mostly fixed the small problems themselves. Three cheers for empowered users!

If it makes you feel better, I know 2 guys who are the sole support for 600 users, and have been for almost 2 years. Guaranteed nobody is happy with that.

I'm grossly overwhelmed.

[aidoneus]

I'm at a major university in New England, doing IT support for the athletics department and here's our breakdown:

420 Users of which...
250 are full time staff that we support.

And doing the support? Me. That's it. 1:250. And I not only do desktop support, but I also aid in account creation, manage the IT systems budget and 4 year hardware replacement plan, handle telephone technical support and trouble shooting and deal with anything else that pops up.

And yet my direct supervisor doesn't see a problem with this ratio. It's a wonder I haven't been killed by my users yet...

*sigh*