ERP088 - How MSPs must adapt to WFH

Today's a very special episode of the Evolved Radio podcast. For the first time ever, I'm actually doing a solo show. I have this blog topic that I've been putting together that I thought actually might be great to just expand upon and put in a podcast episode as well. So today I am going to be talking to myself about how MSPs must adapt to the work from home shift that is occurring in all of our businesses. And this is something that I think is important one for MSPs to recognize certainly, but also there is a conversation that could actually expand and how this is impacting our clients as well. The work from home shift was a huge change in how MSPs were providing technology to their clients. And there was a huge uplift of work in pushing those people to be able to work from home and enabling the technologies that allow them to access their applications and their files and things like that. So the early stage of this was technical. But there are definitely some long-term implications from a productivity and also from a HR and management standpoint, so that's what we're going to be getting into today. Stick around and enjoy. Welcome to Evolved Radio, where we explore the evolution of business and technology. I'm your host Todd Kane. Are you still relying on frustrating patchwork of legacy solutions? Modernize your cybersecurity and data protection with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. It's a single solution that combines backup, anti-malware, and endpoint protection management as an MSP, you can easily improve client security posture, eliminate complexity, and generate more recurring revenue. Learn about Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud at Acronis.com. So let's face it, the pandemic has changed work forever. Regardless of how you felt about people working from home and having that as an option. In your organization. I personally saw plenty of MSPs that were purely remote and had people that were scattered all across the country and potentially even all across the world. So this is not necessarily new for everyone. The new part is that everyone is taking part. And that this is a widespread change in how teams are working together. And everyone seems to agree that a hybrid work style is here to stay. So your organization may not be purely remote going forward, but there will be elements of your organization that are remote. And one of the I think most important parts that I see in this change is that this really forces people to take on more mature management habits. To measure and monitor and influence the productivity of the staff underneath them. And historically I've always really grizzled around the idea of visibility equals productivity. And this is simply not true. A lot of owners of businesses and managers will often suggest that if I can see my staff sitting at their desk, I have more comfort that they're being productive and they're working. And this has never been true. It really bothers me when people sort of lean on this idea. And granted, I understand why, but if you look at the evidence, if you look at the work productivity, if you talk to the staff and get real honest feedback from them about these circumstances. It's almost categorically true that people are not necessarily as productive as you think they are just because they're in the office. There is just as many occasions that people can be surfing the web and going on Reddit and even potentially playing games in the office. Just because they're in the office sitting at their desk does not mean that they're productive. So the shift in work from home and one of the things that people really struggle with the most. Is how do I know I'm still going to be getting the most from people, how do I know that they're not going to be just at home playing video games or watching Netflix instead of working? And that is a real fear that I think needs to be addressed. But the management techniques that can be leveraged here have always existed and it's really not that much different from what you could have done and should have been doing when people are in the office. They're just a lot more important now that potentially people are working from home. And also the other part of this I think is that. The work from home model has a lot of appeal for staff. And organizations that are going to be too resistant to having people working from home, they may see a shift or a turnover in staff. Because these are some of those work perks that people will look to and actually apply a level of value around. People have different expectations of what their employer should provide for them. And this is just one of those benefits that people need to start to understand as being desirable by the staff. So we've heard a lot of people talking about the great resignation, which I prefer to term the great reshuffling. I think it's a better description of what's happening here because a lot of people are leaving their roles. And potentially looking for more meaning in what they're doing, they're potentially looking for just to upgrade their position and taking on more responsibility. Often a lot of them are looking for better work life balance as well. So there's lots of different reasons that people are rotating in and out of roles. And I'd say for the large part, MSPs and the IT industry have been somewhat protected by from this versus other industries. But now this is really starting to show up in a lot of the organizations that I see. Where people are starting to leave and potentially rotating into other roles and trying out different positions in different companies. So it's important to recognize the impact that this could potentially have on MSP businesses. And we were already in a pretty tight labor market. Pre-pandemic numbers that I saw were around 4% unemployment. And for the technology industry, it was negative 6% employment. Which really puts a fine point on how difficult it is to find and to hire new talent. And increasingly going forward, it will be difficult to retain talent because of this competitive nature of our industry. And if organizations are too rigid in how they're dictating where and how people can do the work that is required of them, I think you'll have a tougher time both retaining people and certainly attracting people. If you're in a role that generally you like and you like the work that you do, you like the team that you have, if someone offers you slightly more money, then you're unlikely to leave. I mean, granted if someone's going to give you a 50% pay raise, then that's a tough opportunity to turn down. But if it's kind of equivocal to what you're already making and you're really comfortable, you like what you're doing, and you feel like you're your work is respected and you have the benefits that you desire, then it's unlikely that people will leave just for money. But if people are really frustrated around not having that flexibility and the benefits of their work not meeting their expectations, then they are more likely to leave. So it's not just about money. And in a lot of cases, money is not the motivator, it's often these other benefits that surround the value that they perceive. And money is a component of that value, but there are the other benefits in an organization that are important to consider. So the first point here is understanding what your staff actually desire as it relates to these benefits is really crucial. So one thing I a few things I would certainly suggest is. Collect staff feedback. And you don't necessarily have to follow this to the letter, but at least understanding the preferences of your team will be really valuable in understanding how you move forward on this. If for the most part people align with what you think the work should look like and how it gets done, then maybe there's not a lot of concern here around the changes that you hope to be able to make. But if your team is 180 degrees from where you feel the work from home benefits actually exist and what's possible in your organization. This could be an uphill battle. So getting that input will be crucial. Next, I think it's important to be patient. And recognize that this will take some time to figure out. Both how work from home is adapted in your organization, where it fits, where it doesn't. What members of the team can do what. A lot of this will require some level of experimentation and both parties will need to be patient. Patient as managers and patient as staff. So actively seeking that patience and working through this together as a team will actually engender some of that commitment and that loyalty from the team in recognizing that you don't have all the answers. And no one really knows what this should look like and the the hybrid nature of work from home will be a bit slippery to determine sort of how this actually fits. Next is really seeing the whole person. And recognizing that people have a life outside of their job and hopefully that life doesn't conflict with their work. Necessarily through those core hours. But also understanding that that there are ways that you can actually provide a lot of benefit for people in recognizing their needs and how you can adapt those based on their work schedule. I've had several instances in my management career where I've taken someone who others perceived as a failing member of the team and sat them down, really understood their needs and how their life is functioning outside of work. Made some fairly basic changes to their schedule and had a ton of success and saw increased commitment, increased productivity. And overall happiness and general well-being increased in those staff members. And this this was not difficult to do. One staff member had a really tough time showing up to work. This is pretty common. You know, the person that stays up late and just cannot get themselves going in their in the time necessary. To meet their their schedules as it's defined in in your organization. And just allowing them to start two hours later and stay two hours after the the rest of the team. This has multiple benefits. One, you know, they're more likely to be available and show up on time to work. Which is a pretty novel and necessary thing to do. But also it allowed us to cover some split shifts and do some after hours work because this person was working later than the rest of the team. And outside the core hours of support, so we had some time for them to do patching and rebooting and some after hours work that was really beneficial. Had another staff member who was inconsistent and their attendance was really spotty. And understanding sort of their needs and the struggles that they had at home. Made some again, fairly basic changes to their schedule and all of a sudden, higher loyalty, higher productivity. And there were times where they ebbed and flowed. They were not always on, but the times that they were on, they were absolutely killing it. And that made a really huge significant change for both our business and certainly for their lives. So really understanding people's lives outside of work and seeing that whole person is a really important measure. And something that fits right into this work from home model as well. Finally, another tip around this is building your bench. So recognizing like everyone else, you're going to have probably have some staff leave. And this will be your choice or theirs. But, you know, making sure that you have staffing levels and that if you need to grow and add more people, doing that proactively and understanding who you would like to hire ahead of time. It certainly in some of those key positions, architecture, tier two, tier three. These people are not just sort of waiting in the wings and and hoping to to to get a new job. So eyeing some talent and keeping those people warm in a relationship to so that you can bring them on when you need them. is really beneficial in your hiring strategy. So understanding who is a prospect on your bench and who you would like to hire in the future is a really useful way to protect against some of that downside risk of staff leaving. Next major theme here, I think that I'd like to put on people's radar. Is outsource what you can. And the work from home model is really accelerated options around outsourcing. And granted, this has been a great benefit for MSPs because people are recognizing that the technology needs that they had. And the the insource IT teams are potentially being outsourced to MSPs in a lot of cases. So this has been a great business creator and opportunity creator for MSPs. But I find it interesting that the number of MSPs that don't fully leverage their options in third party outsources for themselves. It's a little odd in my mind that, you know, we build this business around outsourcing IT, but we're somehow very protective about outsourcing our own work to a third party. So I understand sort of the mental blocks and the stories that we tell ourselves around why this wouldn't work. In a lot of cases, it comes from an honest place. That we have had poor experiences in working with outsourced, usually offshore teams that are not as capable as some of the previous support teams that we've had. And this really gets stuck in people's mind around this is what outsourcing looks like. And that's partly the case. So again, I understand where this comes from. But I've also seen a ton of success with people outsourcing to third party service desks. And if this is done well, it's incredibly valuable. It allows you to scale your team in an elastic fashion by adding resources and removing resources based on your growth or contraction of your business. And with the economic turbulence that we're going to be seeing over the next couple of years, that is certainly going to be a benefit. To be able to flex your your team size and adapt to your business as you need to go. There are some things that are incredibly critical to make sure that this goes well though. The first one being documentation. If your documentation is not great. Then outsourcing to a third party help desk is incredibly difficult. And what you'll often end up doing is having a very expensive call answering service where they accept that call, create a ticket, they have no idea what to do with it. They don't have privileges, they have no processes to follow and they just end up escalating it to you. What should be a third party service desk that shields you from a lot of that tier one, tier two support, ends up being a call answering service that escalates pretty much everything to you. And of course you're going to end up dissatisfied in that situation. The second issue that I see in managing those outsourced relationships. Is it still requires some level of management. Like there are benefits to outsourcing to a third party that, you know, you don't have to have that burden of hiring and some of the HR responsibilities. Of the oversight of that team are removed and both of those are great. But it does require active management. You have to be able to treat that extension of your team as your team and ensuring that you're increasing process, doing troubleshooting. Treating them really as an extension of your team and managing and coaching their support of your staff. So there is still an incumbent responsibility on you as an owner and a manager. That you're active in the management of that team. Usually the groups that you outsource these responsibilities too will be managing the staff directly. But having some level of oversight and working either with that account manager that is inside that group or if this is a situation where you're outsourcing to individual contractors, someone still needs to be managing these people, giving them the processes that they need, giving them the feedback to coach them in the direction that you need to be successful with those businesses. So you can't just outsource to somebody else and assume that it will work without your input as well. So sure, a lot of this work can be outsourced and that is certainly a benefit. But you absolutely still need to have a local presence. And there's a couple of reasons of why. One, there's some system requirement and, you know, deploying new workstations, being on site, some of that that stuff can be outsourced in in certain circumstances. But still most MSPs will insource that stuff and the onsite visits, the workstation builds, new laptop deployments. All that stuff are typically still done in house. As I say, there are some options where you could outsource that. But it's not typical in most organizations that I see. But the larger aspect of this of that onsite work is not being tied down and mired. In the day-to-day operations of the support desk, assuming that has been outsourced to somebody else. Or if that's happening. Then hopefully that's giving you more time to spend on that account management and business development side of things. And this is truly harder to outsource, again, it's possible, sure. But it's a hell of a lot easier to do onsite having that that close connection with the clients that you're working with. And this comes from the idea of people buy from people. It's a really true adage. Once your service delivery is predictable, you can spend more time to focus on that account management. And development of that project funnel to help the clients ensure that they're moving along that continuum. Of the IT infrastructure needs. So the being able to be more local and spend time on that account management is again a large benefit. Of where this work from home model can take us and what that allows you to spend more time on. So the systems that you should be using to manage staff either working in the office, working from home or more likely in a hybrid model going forward. Really shouldn't be any different than the tried and true management practices that I've been coaching people on for years. And it's really comes down to some simple things. Around building goals, building expectations, communicating those expectations and then measuring those expectations against people's real world performance. What this looks different from what we talked about at the top is the old management model, the old guard kind of does this presence equals productivity type approach and that's the measure of productivity for the staff. And what that is measuring the inputs. You know, I don't care about how long someone sat at their desk. I'm more interested in what they were able to produce, what their outputs were for the period of time that they sat there. So technically, I don't really care where they sit because I can measure their performance regardless. And that's what we need to start to focus on here. Is communication of good expectations aligned with the goal and measuring the performance of the individuals based on their actions and their output through the course of the day. That's the future of the management model. And it's not anything new, these are the things that you should have been doing in managing staff in house and now we're managing staff in this hybrid model in the same way. And it produces much, much better results. As long as you're consistent with your measurement and providing good quality feedback with staff and providing a troubleshooting mentality as a manager, all right? So we've agreed that these are the expectations of your role, we've agreed around what KPIs and metrics we're going to be measuring. And if those measures are not being met, we're having a conversation about why we're failing together. What have I not given you as a manager, what systems do you not have, what can I explain better, what can we troubleshoot to remove roadblocks and enable your success in your role in order to hit these KPIs? So lots more sort of a separate topic. But definitely important to understand that these are the things that we want to focus on in the future of the hybrid work world. So the final idea I wanted to mention here is the complexity of work. Has a lot to do with whether or not it feels like you're having the work from home model benefiting you. And honestly, there are some types of work that do benefit from an in-person connection. And this usually is leveraged around routine work versus creative work or innovation work, however you want to define this. But that routine work that is process oriented and the scenarios and certainty of the information that you're dealing with is pretty consistent. And that's why the service desk model is really prime and perfect for that work from anywhere type approach. Is where a person sits and the the physical position that they're in in order to do routine work has a very limited impact. Whereas if you're talking about strategic work, collaboration, things that are messy and misunderstood, the process definition is very low. And the certainty of the situation that you're facing is also low, then the having people closer to you for that type of work does tend to produce better results. So strategic work, process definition, more collaborative work. Those types of things are definitely going to benefit from working in person or a fixed location. And there's there's great ways to sort of model this out. Either this role is hired or defined as requiring a certain presence and some commitment of time on site or in the office, then sure, that is something that can be discussed around the role. And making sure that people understand why that is the case. Because without sort of the discussion around why that work has to be done in the office. It may just be perceived as a lack of trust. And that is going to be damaging. So making sure that you're having open transparent conversations about how you're defining the work is a great place to start. So, finally. Thinking about that idea of this complexity of the work and the definition of the process being sort of the access that you move and understand where work needs to happen. The higher complexity of working with multiple people on things that have an undefined process versus the individuals kind of occasionally collaborating with each other. But otherwise just doing fairly routine work and smashing through the queue with a high degree of documentation and process without involving high numbers of people. That is work that can be done from anywhere. And that's a great system to sort of build your future work from home model. So hopefully this is a conversation is at least giving you some food for thought. It's maybe some specific directions as well about how your team and your company is going to be adapting to the work from home model going forward. And also having this same discussion with your staff and certainly with your clients as well. I think that that is beneficial to open up this idea to your clients and talk about how technology can enable these things to give them better predictability and certainty around the work that their staff is doing and how they're measuring their success as well. So thanks for your time, have an awesome week.