Understaffed in IT? Review Workload Before Adding Headcount

“We need another person” is a reasonable response to an overloaded IT team. But before approving a role, it helps to understand what is filling the team’s week. A new hire may be essential. Some of the pressure may also come from repetitive tasks, avoidable support issues, or coverage that a small team cannot sustain.

Self-reported claims of understaffed IT has always been a norm, but even more so with the growth in needs driven by AI and cybersecurity. In one recent survey of European businesses, 56% said their cybersecurity teams were understaffed and 55% said they were underfunded. Plus, 72% reported that their roles were more stressful than five years earlier. Unrealistic expectations and excessive workloads were among the reported causes of stress.

This raises a practical question for any team struggling to keep up: where would a change make the biggest difference?

Hiring Alone May Leave the Problem Unsolved

Recruiting adds capacity when the role addresses a clear gap. It does less for a team whose time disappears into the same recurring problems. A new hire often inherits the same ticket queue, manual processes, and competing priorities, and is usually too busy to fix them.

Coverage is a separate challenge. Adding one person to a small department may help during business hours, but sustainable overnight and weekend support needs a staffing plan, escalation procedures, and time off. Define the coverage you need before assuming another full-time role will provide it.

Reviewing the workload can make a hiring decision more precise. You may discover that the team needs a specialist, additional support capacity, or a partner to handle a defined part of the operation.

Reallocate Before You Recruit

Start your review by looking at where your team’s time goes, such as keeping systems running or protecting the business. Ticket records can help show which activities are crowding out planned or strategic projects.

From there, automate repeatable tasks with appropriate oversight. Software deployment, routine monitoring, and parts of patching and account provisioning can follow approved workflows. Keep testing, authorization, exception handling, and checks on whether the automation actually worked. The goal here is to reduce repetitive effort without losing control.

Then, document recurring fixes. Useful runbooks and standard configurations give the next person a reliable starting point. Focus first on issues that appear repeatedly in the ticket queue, then keep the documentation current as systems change.

Consider outside support for clearly defined responsibilities. Monitoring, help desk coverage, backup management, or security operations may be suitable for a managed services provider. Outsourcing a function doesn’t outsource accountability. Someone internally should still own the relationship.

How a Different Division of Work Could Help

Consider a hypothetical company with two internal IT employees whose project work is regularly interrupted by support requests. Leadership can evaluate moving certain tasks like monitoring, routine patching, backups, or after-hours support to a provider. The internal team would retain responsibility for business applications, vendor decisions, and the technology roadmap.

But before making that change, compare the service proposal with the cost and capabilities of an additional hire. Include time costs that apply to both a new hire and a vendor like onboarding and the internal time needed to manage them. Set a baseline for ticket backlog, repeat incidents, and project progress so you can judge whether the arrangement is helping.

Plus, make sure to consider burnout in this equation. When critical knowledge lives with one overloaded person, an absence or departure can leave the rest of the team struggling. Shared documentation, backup coverage, and realistic priorities deserve space in the budget alongside tools and salaries.

A Question for Your Next Budget Meeting

Before approving the next IT role, ask which work requires your internal team’s knowledge and which work could be automated, simplified, retired, or assigned elsewhere. Then decide what staffing is needed for the responsibilities that remain.

Macro Connect offers managed IT support for co-managed environments, including help desk services, strategic guidance, and 24/7 security monitoring. If your team needs more capacity, let’s talk through the workload and identify where outside support could help.