ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN A SERVICE DESK
A couple of years ago we started an implementation of a help desk it jobs for a company in the finance industry. They had had a Service Desk for several years, but could not bring it to the level they needed; they lacked relevant measurements, suffered from high staff turnover, low quality services… In short, it was a Service Desk that simply did not meet the expectations of the business or users. Amid despair, they decided to tender the service with external providers and our company was selected as the new provider.
When implementing new services, we usually start by evaluating the operation as we find it. During this evaluation we analyze indicators, documentation and sit down to talk and take notes with personnel involved in the operation of the service to be implemented. On this occasion, the documentation seemed to be correct and complete, some of the causes of the deficiencies were not evident until the interviews.
As I sat down to talk to the service manager I noticed that the service was not suffering from lack of interest on his part or negligence. On the contrary, he seemed to be a very professional person and interested in the success of his area. He had a lot of frustration built up as he felt that no matter how much effort he put in, things were not going as the business expected and all the pressure from the IT department's results tended to fall on his area.
He explained to me that management hoped that, as the leader of the Service Desk, he would be able to align the rest of the organization with best practices for service deliveries (whatever this meant). However, no matter how hard he tried, he had not been able to advance. The resolution areas did not pay attention to services, were not concerned with user satisfaction, and generally did not see the Service Desk as an ally, but rather as an enemy.
As I talked about the different scenarios that he came to experience over the years, I began to understand what was one of the main causes of the low success of the Service Desk: At the organizational level, the responsibilities of the roles exceeded the authority they had.
THE MOST VALUABLE “P” IN IT: PEOPLE
ITIL tells us that every service is made up of 4 elements called: The 4 P's of Service design (or the 4 P's of ITIL). These are: Products, Process, Partners and People. Of the 4, People are recognized as the most valuable element in an organization and its services.
People refers to human capital, which is also the only organizational asset that has both concrete and abstract capabilities. Concrete because they can physically interact with other elements such as computers and abstract because they support and apply organizational knowledge.
Unfortunately, despite being the most important asset of any organization, human capital tends to be poorly managed in many IT organizations where our primary focus is on technology. Service Management best practices help us establish the relationships that human capital has with the technological services offered by IT departments .
THE ROLES AND THEIR DEFINITION
ITIL establishes that a role is a set of responsibilities and authorities that are conferred on one or more individuals to interact with other assets and offer a comprehensive service. To correctly define a role, we must assign it:
- A title that distinguishes it from others.
- Responsibilities, which focus their efforts on certain results of a service or process.
- Authority, conferred to enable the fulfillment of the assigned responsibilities.
It is important that the allocation of responsibilities and authorities is carried out correctly to promote success in the activities of a given role. There are two possible scenarios when these elements are not properly combined:
- Authority exceeds responsibility: In this case, authority is wasted because although the organization confers the necessary elements (hierarchical or otherwise) to carry out actions, if they are not part of its responsibility, the authority simply cannot be used effectively. Worse still, we fall into the risk that the role intervenes in matters that are not relevant to its objectives, falling into distractions.
- Responsibility exceeds authority: This is the riskiest and unfortunately most common scenario in organizations. Responsibilities greater than authority are assigned to roles, setting goals that they simply are not able to meet because they do not have the necessary elements.
In the example I described at the beginning of the article, the Service Desk Manager had the goal of aligning the IT organization with best service provisioning practices. However, he lacked the authority to take action to accomplish that goal. Authority is expressed through role capabilities within the organization. These abilities must be recognized by the rest of the colleagues in order to assign the appropriate importance. In an extreme case, the Service Desk Managershould have had the necessary authority to take actions (warning or otherwise) over other staff who did not align with best practices. Lacking this power, the rest of the organization naturally did not recognize the importance of the strategy or the manager's perception.
BEYOND DEFINITION
Once roles are defined (with their appropriate responsibilities and authorities), roles need to be managed correctly. That is, there must be appropriate mechanisms to determine what roles the organization needs and what kind of knowledge they must have to properly execute their tasks as well as measure their performance.
Staff training must be strictly aligned to their activities within the organization. Insufficient training produces personnel without the necessary knowledge to carry out their tasks in the best way. Exaggerated training affects the organization through distractions and higher costs.
During our webinar, we will explore more details about defining and managing roles correctly as well as ways to motivate staff and get their best performance.
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