With an increased focus on staff burnout and encouragement to take leave following the challenges of the past year, many companies are looking at ways to ensure their customer needs are continuously met while their staff take a well-deserved break.

Increasingly, we see businesses turning to outsourced IT providers to fill temporary and short-term staffing gaps.

If key personnel are out of the business for any period, it can have a major impact on how the business meets customer SLAs, delivers projects, adheres to timeframes, maintains day-to-day operations, and even how it responds to mission critical emergency situations.

Here are five key steps that we believe any organisation can take to ensure it’s ‘business as usual’ when it comes to IT services.

Get prepared as early as possible

While early preparation may seem an obvious priority, it’s more common than not for organisations to leave their holiday staffing to the last minute.

To avoid IT staffing gaps, it’s important for businesses to determine their requirements well in advance. Data analysis can also be used to predict future demand, and ensure clients have the appropriate combination of IT staff on-site to respond to this.

Fill last minute gaps

Even though it pays to be as organised as possible with regards to your IT staffing, most businesses will still encounter last-minute gaps.

Its important to ensure your outsources IT provider can provide flexibility so that you can request any number of employees, and can also specify any timeframe that you require – whether it’s one day, or several months.

Choose an IT-specific recruiter

When it comes to sourcing talent, you need to know that the IT experts you are employing are able to hit the ground running.

Partnering with a service provider that has a pool of ready-talent that ranges from help-desk support people, all the way to senior network engineers and architects will help ensure the contractors are technically tested and competent.

Put firm controls in place

Many organisations don’t have the necessary controls, strategies or procedures in place to effectively utilise external staff.

To minimise risk when outsourcing, it’s important to – among other things - understand the core elements of the delivery model, perform regular assessments, understand the legal implications, and structure a detailed contract.

Your provider should work with you to put a robust plan in place and ensure any process or legal concerns are completely covered off, and risks are mitigated.

React as circumstances change

Over a holiday period in particular, it’s likely that staffing levels will fluctuate – often at the last moment. Rather than just accepting this to be the case, be prepared to engage contractors at the last minute – to maintain all-important business continuity.

At AC3, we specialise in helping businesses maintain business continuity at all times, through our contingent workforce solution.

As well as offering our consulting and technology expertise, we also offer a team of highly skilled IT professionals who are available to work on-site, as contractors, when your organisation needs a few extra hands. Let AC3 help you find the right people.