Ideas for getting IT teams noticed

Hi All

I dont know if anyone has noticed but ICT tech departments seem to some what be left alone.
I work in a ICT support department in a college and we are getting to the point where people are not bothering with us or dont like us.. very sad i know!!!!

We have just got a new manager and he has noticed this and as a time we are thinking about creating some new idea to get the team noticed and to tell staff and students that we are here and we are doing a good job..or at least trying our best.

The problem is the ICT equipment in the college is getting old and people are thinking we are holding new equipment back from them. for example desktop ages range from 2 to 9 years old.

We are trying to think of new ideas to raise the profile of the team within the college as well as involve people in innovation. Anyone got any ideas? Anyone currently putting things into practice??

We are thinking daily tips, daily server updates, plans for the furture, FAQ sessions and a lunch and breaktime info stand.

Any other ideas?

Thanks
David Kitching

Superhero costumes for the times your called to fix a problem :) that will certainly get you noticed.

Best way i would say is just getting out an about walk around and chat with a few of the staff have a presence in the corridors. I know our staff are not interested in any of the technical side bits we do.

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I dont know if anyone has noticed but ICT tech departments seem to some what be left alone

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Chance would be a fine thing!

Increase your visibility by wearing a 'uniform'... matching polos/open-neck shirts depending upon how formal your place is.

Also, make sure that you update people whilst working on tickets and maybe updates on upcoming stuff/service status so that people can see all is well and things are afoot to make improvements.

Cleaning PCs always makes them look shiny and new... failing that, change the monitors and people will believe they have a new super fast PC!!!

We were perceived negativly last year as server performance was poor, so I started reporting our SLA.
But based it on school hours of 8:30am to 4pm while students are in school on a nice bar chart.
Unsurprisingly these were good and even with a days downtime you were still reporting 21 days of good performance, so the statistics looked good.
This goes into my report to SLT each month and our SLA is in the high 90, how can you be criticised for high 90's, it's only in IT Industry that they expect 99.99% ....

Maybe not superhero but Edugeek Polo Shirts (Available at all good Edugeek conferences at very reasonable prices) mark you out as "special" :)

And of course, you need the Lanyards to go with them :)

And the cap :)

Si

Takes me back to industry when my taget was 99.3% on Windows servers, and Unix Manager got 99.9%, our Managing Director said they were unacceptable targets as all other departments were being targeted in the 80's, so Manager had to say and how many days a year do you not want access to email?

Do you need to "re-brand" your service? Perhaps launch a nice new system with more feedback, a blog, improved (or at least, more publicity for something you're already offering) service desk opening times and services offered? If people are upset at a lack of replacement hardware, are you as open as possible about the replacement process? (This is something that could be talked about on a blog, for example).

One thing we did was offer an "IT Surgery" to staff - a time slot in the college's CPD programme where both myself (senior engineer) and the NM were available to talk to staff about any concerns/ideas/questions they might have in a less formal setting outside of a service desk call or whatever. This was a chance for them to bring issues to us, for us to tell them about things, and for people to discuss and understand one another's ideas... this helped us understand where something that sounded trivial to us was actually quite disruptive to the learning process and helped teaching staff understand that something that sounded like a simple request to them actually required a good amount of resources and couldn't be done 'just like that'. This really helped.

Also bear in mind that if you are getting left alone it means there's very few IT related issues. This is a good indication you are doing your job well. :)

Get yourselves noticed?

Start a war on flash gaming... it's working here, the kids are now shouting obscenities at us in the corridors.

I agree with the chatting to staff more option, even just making sure you say hello in the corridor or a nod and a smile. The department I work in are very polite but don't really leave the office much, I tend to take a walk about or go into to staff room every once in a while just to show face. It really does help a lot!

Turn the internet off for a bit, that's sure to get you noticed.

Thanks some very good ideas here....i dont think SLT would let us have superhero costumes lol would be funny mind!
Personally i think as a team we are doing a good job and acting in the correct manner to faults, our problem is people dont see us enough therefore have no idea what we are planning or doing. Also we have a lack of understanding from staff and SLT therefore is it normally really hard to present new ideas or say something needs replacing. Im sure they all think ICT systems work on magic and we just plug them in, once in thats it for the next 10 years.

Email round a quick weekly tip.

For example:
* Zoom in and out of webpages by holding down Ctrl and scrolling the mouse wheel
* How tabs work in IE (including middle click for different things)
* Locking your computer
* Changing your password
so on and so forth. Just small, one page tips for things that might seem obvious to you. You'll be surprised how many don't know some things, and have never asked because they're either to embarassed or didn't know it even existed.

Example attached from when I had time to do it still!

Attachment 14132

Go on PAT testing course
at start of break go to staff room
Notice kettle with damaged insulation on power cable
Write out condemmed label stick it on kettle
Cut plug off kettle

That got me noticed (just not in a good way)