Reducing staff expectation

[telsa80]

I work for a government school in australia. All government schools have a job logging process for teachers/staff to request IT things using servicenow.

 

I have moved to a school that was not using the standard system and staff expectations are way out compared to other schools.

 

Staff at this school expect instant support all the time whether they rock up to the IT office, phone, email or god forbid actually log a job but then turn up instantly and say i logged a job.

 

The expectation level means that large jobs wont get done because you are always responding instantly to requests.

 

The other issue is staff not willing to try and help themselves. IE common projector issues like WDA wont connect, or projector on wrong input that we supply self help guides for.

 

They also expect a lot from IT staff that other schools in government not expect such as plugging in extension leads for any gear, mapping out powerpoints for non IT use, or we would like IT tech staff to film things and put it up for students to view. In our departments these are roles of teachers, teacher assistants, admin staff.

 

I guess what I am looking for is some insight in how to lower expectations of staff to a normal level so that jobs are prioritised to impact on learning. Luckily I do have some senior staff backing and have started pushing people back to log a ticket. This currently is not going down well with staff but slowly some are doing the right thing.

Edited July 9, 2022 by telsa80

[dmj]

Define and publish a service level agreement.

My recommendation is to do a short course on ITILv4 (foundation). It will explain the basic concepts of SLO's, SLA's and how to align the business objectives with an achievable service level.

[jmak]

It'd also be helpful to try and find a quick win that improves something high profile or widely requested.

 

At my last place I acquired a second hand wireless setup from another school that was upgrading. It was out of date, but at least it was an enterprise grade system and I put an AP in every classroom instead of one per three in the corridor. It made lessons work better.

 

I also sorted out WSUS properly and set scheduled tasks so that the pupil machines updated overnight, which meant that they never started lessons to find 30 machines all trying to update over wi-fi before a lesson could get under way.

 

Also find an advocate - possibly someone who moans a lot, but if you can get someone like that on side, they'll spread the message.

[mikeprice]

I would suggest that you problem starts with Senior Management.

If they allow this expectation then it will continue - so you need to make sure thye are aware of the problems.

 

Point out that if you are constantly swamped by people demanding help NOW for things they can do themselves - then you will end up needing more IT staff otherwise the important long term jobs won;t get done.

 

Get SMT on board at a start point

Then get them on board with enforcing the logging system - it will cause a lot of trouble to start with but if there is a proper fault logging system then it also provides you with a job log which can be analysed to show problem areas, staff needing more training (or a kick up the whatsit for not doing it themselves) and, at teh end of the year, it will show what the IT department has been doing

 

with staff just arriving and demanding xxx then nothing is properly logged and cannot be run efficently

 

 

People on here have done just that and shown it can work

 

after a while

 

but you NEED management on board fully

[psydii]

 

Also find an advocate - possibly someone who moans a lot, but if you can get someone like that on side, they'll spread the message.

 

^this

 

Several very successful school leaders I have worked with make a point of identifying these people very early on in the change management process.

 

The other thing I would look at is *why* this culture is there. We have recently broken out of it by leaning into it. (and spending money)

 

The teacher facing tech was a mess, funds were made available to sort it out. Along side that, we (*SLT) announced *only* problems related to that could queue jump. Reports were to be by email to the service desk, and they would have a 15 minute break-fix SLA.

 

It was a really rough few weeks as this settled in, but the new tech and the fast response to these limited set of problems made a huge difference.

 

We got to what mattered, and the SLA on these matters meant anything else reported to the service desk also got a fast response unless a critical ticket appeared, (because the helpdesk techs were watching the queue like hawks).

These critical tickets were identified by a keyword that had to be used by the teacher when reporting, and the system would also forward them to the Deputy Head to allow them to have visibility of the critical work load.

 

After a couple of months, staff had learned how to fix their problems by watching what we did when we came to their rooms (win+p FTW) - because they knew that when they reported a problem it *also* landed at at Deputy Head's inbox and to them a 15 second self-service fix, is better than a daft email that interrupts a DH followed by a 5 to 15 minute wait for the helpdesk. 15 minutes was about the time it would take to get a response even in person with a large site and that they are not allowed to leave a class unattended.

 

People learned that tickets raised on the helpdesk got the fastest responses, and service improved. Win-Win.

 

Clearly though SLT had to buy in and support the addressing of the underlying service problem.

 

We now have time for CPD and more general Service improvements and project work.