How Can We Motivate an IT Support Team Facing Monotony and Budget Constraints?

Creating a Healthy and Motivating Team Environment

My query is about creating a healthy and motivating team environment. The scenario is as follows: It's a support team in an IT company; the work is related to supporting business applications and monitoring the IT systems. 50% of the team has long tenure, and the rest are recent hires of 1+ year. The work is in shifts supporting round the clock.

Challenges:

- They feel it's a monotonous job; there's no learning curve.
- People are willing to work on something new; however, it's customer-driven, and nothing new can be offered in the near future.
- They want to increase their knowledge and skill sets; however, no action is being taken to achieve it.
- Due to a lack of budgets, incentives/bonuses have been stopped for a year.
- There's no willingness to work night shifts, although shift allowances are provided.

Ask: What steps can be taken in a support environment to motivate people?

Suggestions for Enhancing Team Motivation in IT Support

Though I am not from the IT industry, let me give you 1-2 suggestions.

Firstly, let me suggest job rotation. Is it possible to move seniors from the support function to the developer function? Of course, this will involve training the employee. Nevertheless, you may obtain a bond from the employee that he/she will not leave the job for the next 1-2 years. To do this, never place seniors directly in the support function. Always start with juniors and whenever an opportunity arises, move them to the developer side.

Secondly, what about those who are on the bench? Can they be deployed to work for 3 months in the support function? This will enhance the utilization of manpower who are on the bench. However, do not require them to work more than three months as no developer would like to work in the support function.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Thank you for your response. I agree that giving the tenured staff a next-level opportunity would be beneficial from an employee engagement perspective, as well as help to bring fresh blood into the support team. This concept is in process and may get implemented in the near future.

Regarding the bench, we do not follow this approach in our organization.

Dear Leokrish, I have one more suggestion. How about outsourcing the work? This will reduce your burden of taking care of the motivation of the team that does monotonous work. If you outsource this process, the cost may slightly go up, but then you will be able to concentrate on high-end activities rather than managing these routine issues. You can include in the SLA parameters under which the outsourcing agency's work will be assessed.

Alternatively, you may approach some staffing company. If you hire them, then managing the continuity of the work will be their responsibility.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar