What to do if your IT team is burned out from fixing printers

Common among many teams, employee burnout is never good news for a manager or business owner. While not easy to fix after it’s occurred, burnout can be easily prevented by careful management.

IT teams are a valuable and somewhat behind-the-scenes asset to all businesses. It’s essential to keep your IT department from getting burnt out from dealing with the same repetitive problems, like printer issues. Consider managed print services and see how much of your IT team’s valuable time and expertise you could save.

Why is your IT team burned out?

Your IT team is likely sent to fix printer related issues multiple times a week. The issue is usually one of the same old problems: there’s a paper jam, there’s no more ink, or the connection is down again. Perhaps it’s more of a case of one of your employees misusing the printer, such as overloading the printer with too many requests, causing multiple preventable issues that your IT team then has to come back and fix. 

All of the above issues are frustrating, repetitive, and time-consuming. If your IT team has to deal with these print-related issues day-in and day-out, not only will they become frustrated and potentially burnt out, it takes away from them accomplishing larger, higher priority tasks. Your IT team also has other more complex tech issues to deal with, and constant printer related problems are eating into their time. Repetitive and time-consuming problems lead to disengagement, which many times leads to burnout. 

Why is burnout such a problem?

If your IT team is overwhelmed and overworked from dealing with the same printer issues, it’s likely you’re losing staff. It will come as no surprise that the next stage from  disengagement and burnout is commonly resignation.

An overworked and burned out IT team is an unhappy one, whose members are likely to quit, leaving you to fill their vacancies. This is not only a frustrating, but costly process that can affect the work flow of your company. The overall success of your business heavily depends on the engagement and satisfaction of your employees, so it’s worth making sure your IT team feels valued and engaged in their work.

How do I prevent our IT team from being burned out?

Train your employees

Make sure your employees are properly trained and informed on how to use a printer effectively without damaging it. Most office printer problems can be easily resolved by training employees how to treat the equipment properly and troubleshoot simple issues. Your team should know how to solve a simple paper jam, refill paper, and make sure the printer is not overloaded.

Include your IT team in a couple of quick office-wide training sessions that should explain to your employees how they can better use the printer and prevent lots of common issues.

Employ a managed print services company

While it might be easy for you to dismiss managed print services in fear of added costs, you may be surprised to learn that a managed print services will not only free up precious IT staff hours, but also optimize your office’s printing, so you can save money and cut costs.

How do managed print services work?

Simply put, a managed print service runs your company’s day-to-day printing operations for you. Choosing the right managed print services provider will undoubtedly optimize your office’s print system, allowing your employees and IT team to work more efficiently and save plenty of time and energy. There’s also the added plus, that a quality managed print services provider will offer your business significant savings on your office printing.

At Coordinated Business Systems, our managed print services bundles all of your document output device costs into a simple low cost-per-print program. Including all copiers, printers, service, parts, and a low cost of ownership — you’ll find that our managed print service can offer your business significant savings.

How can managed print services prevent my IT team from feeling burned out?

More time for your in-house IT team

Good managed print services will come with a team of experts on call and ready to solve any of your printer-related dilemmas. Managed print services will be able to advise on how to prevent future incidents, and rescue your office from printer havoc at critical times.

Without the constant hassle of printer related problems, your IT team will have more time for more high-complexity tech-related concerns. Whether you’re looking to overhaul the company’s software, or make some changes to the website, you’ll find that your IT team will have the time to make it happen.