5 ways your IT team makes your job easier

For the most part, we don’t give much thought to IT. It’s a role that functions silently in the background, chugging along thanklessly until something goes wrong—then we blame them. Truth is, IT is the reason we can so easily come into the office, sit down, and start doing our jobs without any major technological hurdles. And without them we’d likely be tangled in an impermeable mess of Cat 5 E cables, fighting over what to name the office WiFi network we haven’t figured out how to set up yet.

So we wanted to take a moment to appreciate IT—to highlight some of the extremely important work they to make our day go smoothly. Because, frankly, without them, it wouldn’t.

5 ways IT teams make your job easier

1. Provisioning

You know when new employees come into the office on their first day have a desk, a computer, a working internet connection, an email address, a phone number, and everything they need to do their job? That’s provisioning. It’s a process that, depending on your role, can take weeks of planning and an airtight on-boarding process. And without that planning, it’s an absolute headache for everyone involved. So if you or someone on your team is ready to start killing it on day one, your IT team knows what they’re doing and you should buy them coffee sometime.

2. Hardware and software procurement

The amount of deliberation and consideration that goes into choosing the hardware and software you use on a daily basis would make most grown adults weep. There are technical requirements with endless feature list comparisons. Budget parameters which never seem to stretch far enough. Lifecycle planning and security concerns that force you to imagine and account for a seemingly endless number of possible threats. So next time you open your laptop, check your email, and start using the tools that you need to do your job, keep in mind that your IT team put a lot of thought into not only their IT strategy, but also every part of your workflow.

3. Phone Systems

For large global organizations especially, the enterprise phone system is an indispensable tool for so many different teams. If you’re using a modern one that’s based in the cloud, works on all of your devices, and doesn’t somehow call the accounting department every time you pick it up and start dialing, let IT know how much you appreciate it. They had the foresight to opt for one that isn’t stuck in a non-adjacent decade and that you actually want to use.

If you’re one of the unfortunate few that are still using an old desk phone, the good news is that IT probably hates it, too. It’s making their jobs harder. And there’s a good chance that you probably won’t be using it much longer. We have a really good recommendation if you’re interested.*

4. Security

Encryption. Protocol. Privacy. Compliance. Organizations quite literally live and die by the security measures they implement. Some organizations can weather massive penalties and loss of customer trust for security failings and the misuse of data, but most would not. So while it’s something we may not see the inner workings of very often, you can be guaranteed that someone in IT is sweating something security-related.

5. Networks

The thing that connects all the other things and keeps the information going in and out of our computers and phones throughout the building and beyond. It’s more or less keeping our businesses open. Setting up a network can be a Herculean task and maintaining it isn’t easy, either. It’s in a constant state of evolution. And when something goes wrong, your IT team can feel the collective eyes of the company burning a hole into the walls of their cubicles. So when your office network is working without issue, know that IT is firing on all cylinders to make that happen. They sweat so that we don’t have to.

We don’t recognize them enough, but IT people are absolutely integral to the proper functioning of any company. Their jobs are hard, require a tremendous amount of foresight and strategic thinking, and demand technical skills beyond most of our reach. Thank you, IT, for all the amazing work you do so that we can, too.