Exploring the IT coal mine? Don’t forget your canaries

It’s a difficult time for businesses. Global economic uncertainty is causing organisations across all industries to cut budgets and tighten their purse strings. Despite being part of one of the strongest sectors (financially) throughout the pandemic, confidence is currently low for tech companies. Stocks have recently crashed on public markets, and we’ve also seen mass job cuts globally in the sector.

Throughout these uncertain times, it’s easy for organisations to lose their way and become unsure of their priorities. However, what they mustn’t do is lose sight of what is valuable within the business. Employees are and always will be the lifeblood of a business, their canary in the coal mine. Despite this, they are often overlooked and undervalued as a source of insight into their organisation’s IT infrastructure operations.

However rapidly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (LM) are developing, humans will always play an essential part in the roll out and implementation of new technologies. The very nature of tech as an industry relies on the constant regeneration of products and services, with new and innovative developments. For example, the rise of low code/no code platforms and solutions will soon form a large part of software engineers’ toolkits. As a result, there will be fewer jobs for people who formerly coded repetitive and ubiquitous functions. Similarly, as cloud functions continue to grow exponentially in use, managing traditional on-premises data centres may soon become obsolete. As such, IT staff in those roles should begin pivoting to new specialised roles now.

Given that the skillsets of tech professionals are constantly having to be revised, it’s easy to see why misconceptions exist around the role of employees in the industry. Despite this, the workforce will always remain an IT organisation’s most valuable asset, with employees truly at the front line of operations. When the reality of a business’s IT infrastructure is observed and understood from the employee’s perspective, processes across the business can be brought in line to support people to deliver every aspect of the organisation’s work.

Outdated metrics

For many businesses, their traditional ways of working have been used and relied upon for decades. But in that time, both employees and their organisations have evolved immensely. As such, the workforce depends on change occurring to survive and thrive.

The way in which IT operations are measured and run is a great example of this. For example, traditionally, organisations have used of Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure progress. An SLA defines the level of service expected by a customer from a supplier, laying out

the metrics by which that service is measured, and the remedies or penalties, if any, should the agreed-on service levels not be achieved. SLAs often take into account factors such as:

· Performance and accuracy

· Timelines (for example, response time)

· Availability such as uptime and downtime

· Service hours and type of support expected

They ensure both the service provider and user are on the same page and help to:

· Establish clear goals

· Set expectations and baselines

· Keep companies accountable

· Ensure timely support

· Make it easier to measure failure and success

SLAs have long been considered a cornerstone of many businesses, but it’s reaching the point where they’re an outdated metric. In practice, truly understanding an organisations’ IT infrastructure from an employee perspective means recognising the increasing irrelevance of SLAs and KPIs and instead implementing metrics that more closely reflect the realities of an organisation’s IT department.

Updating the measurement process

One of the roadblocks here is that SLAs are often deeply ingrained within the fibre of a business. Therefore, replacing the metrics may be difficult to execute. It’s as much a mindset issue as it is process-based.

SLAs also have the advantage of being ‘native’ to the technology at hand; they ensure performance via measurements, like network throughput responsiveness, which are inherently available as a side-effect of operating that technology. As such, organisations may shy away from new measurements as they might appear to be more subjective or qualitative measurements of actual usage experience, which need to be implemented more consciously in addition to the systems themselves.

Implementing Experience-Level Agreements

Implementing a new metric allows organisations to pull meaningful insights out of multiple data sources in a way that empowers businesses to enforce minimum performance levels. Introducing Experience-Level Agreements (XLAs) and Experience Performance Indicators.

Though the term has been used and defined in a variety of different ways, essentially, XLAs focus on the measurement of outcomes and the value given by a service, as opposed to having judicial agreements on

measures. Unlike SLAs, they combine direct reporting (like the percentage of tickets closed within a given timeframe) and user feedback (such as promoter scores and internal sentiment analysis), resulting in a powerful way of aligning IT strategy with user needs.

User centricity is a major benefit of implementing XLAs. SLAs don’t show how IT is performing from the perspective of employees and the business as a whole. That’s why it’s important to complement them with XLAs and get a better understanding of how employees feel about workplace technology and their organisation’s IT support.

An employee’s market

In today’s labour market, employees are firmly in the driving seat. We’ve seen The Great Resignation and now ‘Quiet Quitting’. Employees know their worth and are taking advantage of the plentiful job vacancies that are currently on offer. As such, there’s never been a more important time for organisations to re-evaluate their approach to employee engagement.

We know that technology can have a real impact on employee engagement and loyalty, as well-supported employees are 85% more likely to stay beyond three years. Organisations must ensure that they are considering the employee perspective and needs when it comes to making decisions on their IT infrastructure and departments. This will save significant time and money avoiding an unnecessary recruitment drive, as content employees are more likely to stay put in their organisations. However, the benefits go beyond this as a happy workforce is proven to be more motivated and productive.

Regardless of sector, organisations must always consider the needs and priorities of their employees. The importance of maintaining a happy workforce cannot be understated – whatever the outside circumstances. Updating processes and strategies in line with this is key to future-proofing the organisation and ensuring the overall smooth running of the business.