Dealing with MSP Technician Burnout

One of the recent challenges MSP leaders and founders face is preventing burnout among their technicians. The growing complexity of IT infrastructure, remote work and the increasing diversity of tools and services used by customers lead to continuous workload growth for technicians, and overload frequently leads to burnout and deteriorating performance.

In this article, we will explore the signs of burnout and strategies for helping technicians avoid it based on the experience of MSP managers who have successfully overcome it.

Signs of burnout

The usual sign managers notice is deteriorating performance. If there is a system to track operational metrics, like resolution time or SLA violations, it quickly becomes visible that technicians are taking more time to respond to and resolve tickets. However, it can be a sign of temporary overload, a temporary spike in workload due to market situation (some vendors love to push updates that create a workload for the MSPs), the time of year, or the onboarding of new customers. Or it can be an indicator of burnout.

The declining performance warrants a review and a conversation, and that conversation is a good time for the manager to look for signs of burnout. A few signs can become obvious in the conversation.

Excessive complaints

The office, hardware, software vendors, customers, management, and kitchen coffee quality. Some people naturally like to complain, yet if all they do is complain, it is a bad sign. They only complain without offering ideas on how to improve the situation; it may indicate that they gave up on improvements and see everything around them in a negative light.

Negative attitude

Negative or “hopeless” comments towards the job, customers or tickets. If technicians make cynical comments about their work and highlight that their efforts are wasted, issues will recur, and customers will continue to do dumb things, it may be a sign of a change in outlook on life, especially if the employee had a positive attitude in the past.

Physical fatigue

They move slower, work on tasks slower, and speak as if they are not interested in conversations—these may indicate that they have lost interest and motivation.

Forgetfulness

They forget the tasks they took on, do not follow up with peers and customers after they promised to and forget to log information in the systems. This can signify that they no longer care about work and dismiss the tasks until their peers or managers remind them.

Lack of interest outside of work

It is also a solid indicator of burnout if they were talking about what they do outside of work frequently and then stopped and were not excited about their hobbies anymore.

Sometimes, it takes only a single conversation with a technician to realize that their behavior and attitude have changed adversely. This requires active listening, withholding judgment and a desire to provide advice. The manager's goal in the conversation is to listen and understand.

Strategies to deal with burnout

The most effective approach is to reduce the workload and optimize the efficiency of day-to-day operations. Consolidating the tech stack, implementing new tools that reduce the time required for processing tickets, implementing customer self-service, and designing an internal documentation system to share information more easily are techniques that free up time. These are prerequisites for implementing other strategies.

Then, consider the following strategies that work for successful MSPs.

Show technicians the impact of their work

One reason work does not feel fulfilling anymore is that it does not seem necessary to anybody or it seems unnecessary. When people are unsure why they do what they do, they tend to question why they must put effort into a fruitless job.

There are many ways to show the impact. One way is to show dashboards of the tickets handled and customers served. Explain how their performance allows them to grow the MSP business and how their assistance will enable them to maintain or grow their customers' business. Another way is to tell stories about customers, which makes it more relatable. For example, a story about a business owner who was able to send her kids to college because IT allowed her to grow her margins sounds better than just cold numbers on the response time.

Help them define and defend their borders

Understand what a reasonable workload is and what shall be done when the workload is unreasonable. Train people to say “no” to the tasks they can’t complete. Offer your help in routing and processing the tasks. Consider hiring more people or contractors for overflow work and reducing the scope of the provided services or reducing SLAs if there is no way to extend the team's capacity. It may be worth reducing the services offered and having tough conversations with the customers instead of losing the team or failing to deliver on promises.

Implement fun activities at work

Build a schedule of breaks and team activities. These can include a team coffee break or technical or soft skills training—anything that takes people out of their daily routine and brings them together to do something else, connect with each other, or gain new skills.

Some people tend to push their limits, trying to handle more and more work, and forget about breaks—skipping breakfasts, lunches, and dinners—and, as a result, burn out. Those people may need help to realize that breaks are useful, and sometimes, a bit of a management push is required to implement them.

Reduce after-hours workload

Customers may work 24/7, and something may happen at any time. Sometimes, it is required to get people to respond to tickets outside of regular working hours. Relying on people taking on work during weekends, holidays and vacations can quickly become a norm, and eventually, it leads to frustration among those agreeing to do it.

Until it is too late and employees start to resent their jobs, implement a policy on handling the workload after working hours, making it an exception instead of the norm, and consider splitting the workload between people when it is essential.

Conclusions

Burnout has become a serious issue for MSP technicians after the COVID-19 pandemic. The amount of work grew due to the growing complexity of IT in the remote environment. Many started working remotely themselves, losing the connection to other people, forgetting to take breaks, and not separating their work and free time – as they would spend all the time in the same place doing the same things repeatedly. As a result, burnout has become a severe risk to MSP businesses, and the owners and managers must pay attention to the issue.

Luckily, personal attention from managers and simple strategies have proven effective for many MSPs who have managed to help their employees deal with burnout.