How to Deal with an IT Issue: A Guide For Hybrid Managers

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November 29, 2022 Business

There is a huge number of workers today who follow a hybrid working style; they head into the office for a few days a week and spend the remainder of their time working from home. Obviously, when working in the office, there is IT support to hand, and it is far easier to access help in fixing any problems. Experiencing an IT issue when working from home can be daunting for managers who aren’t with their staff’s tech breaks down. Luckily, there are a few things that you can do to make dealing with an issue easier for your team and business. Keep reading to learn more.

Before You Reach Out for Help

Working from home poses several challenges, depending on the industry and your team’s role. For example, if your staff are working remotely from your personal device and need access to files or applications from their work computer or network, this could pose a challenge. This is why investing in software like TSplus Remote Access for your team is paramount. First things first, if your staff run into an IT issue when working from home, it can be really easy for them to panick. A lot of people’s first instinct is immediately to reach out to their IT support provider, whether it is in-house or outsourced. However, this is not helpful.

The first thing that you should do is get your staff to send out a few messages to see whether it is an isolated issue or not. They might find that your other colleagues are also dealing with a similar issue which would indicate a problem with the application as opposed to their computer. Your staff might also find that your colleagues have experienced a similar issue in the past, and they can therefore tell them how they fixed it. After they have done this, it is worth then looking online to see whether there is any troubleshooting advice online. Finally, you should also try telling your staff to exit and restart the application or, if that doesn’t work, the entire computer. If this fixes the issue, then they obviously won’t need to go any further or reach out for further support.

Reaching Out to IT Support

After your team member has tried to fix the issue yourself and ascertained whether or not the issue is exclusive to you, it is time to then reach out to your IT support provider. Depending on your organisation, you might need to put in the request yourself as the manager, or they might be able to talk to your IT team themselves. If you’re making the request yourself, then in order to ensure that you will be able to access the help that you need, you have to detail the help request properly. Obviously, your help request will need to begin with an outline of the issue. What category does it fall under? Is it a software issue, a problem with the app, a hardware problem or more general? If you aren’t sure, you will need to make your best guess.

Most of the time, you will be able to select a category from a drop-down menu when submitting the request. You will also need to decide whether your issue will need to be addressed as a matter of urgency or not. Should your help request take priority over other requests submitted by your colleagues? There are often three or four priority levels when submitting a help request ranging from a low level, which is an issue that will need to be fixed whenever there is time, to a high level which is an issue that needs fixing asap. Think about where your request falls on this scale.

Lastly, you will need to outline the issue in more detail. A help request is somewhat similar to an email in that there is often a header and then a subject line that you can use to provide an overview of the issue before then going into more detail in the body of message. During the main part of the help request, you will need to describe the issue in greater detail and outline the affected applications or areas of the computer. You will then need to mention the device that you are using and its operating system before finally outlining any of the other troubleshooting measures that you have taken to fix the issue on your own.

How is the Issue Then Fixed?

The way that the issue is then fixed will largely depend on your IT support provider and whether your business chooses to have a team in-house or outsource support. After you have submitted the help request on behalf of your team member, it really becomes a waiting game. If it is an issue with the hardware, then it might be more challenging to fix, especially for those who outsource their IT support. An in-house team might need to wait until you come into the office to fix the issue – more so if it is a hardware issue. On the other hand, if it is a software or app issue, then it is often a lot easier to fix. Most of the time, if you outsource or if your team is working from home, then your IT support provider will need to access the device remotely in order to fix it.

In Conclusion

Alternative working styles can pose a number of challenges for staff, and often, IT support can be one of them. Encountering an IT issue can throw off your team’s entire working day and make it hard for you to manage your staff’s workloads. This is why you need to ensure that you are approaching all of your IT issues properly and that you give your staff the support they need. Following the tips above can help you to manage any remote IT situation and ensure that your staff get back to work promptly.