The Great Resignation. The talent war. The K-12 personnel crisis.
Whatever you call it, K-12 school districts have a retention problem and it’s not unique to teaching staff – superintendents, principals, nurses, bus drivers, paraprofessionals and others are mass start.
Between the pandemic’s disruptions to student learning, overloaded schedules and increased workloads, staff are burnt out, frustrated and leaving for corporate roles or retiring.
Already tasked with managing a plethora of mission-critical networks, devices, and applications for learning, IT teams have now been elevated to a strategic role, tasked with driving multiple digital transformation initiatives in their districts – often with little increase in team capacity.
These challenges aren’t unique to K-12, which means IT managers are in high demand in the job market. As a result, IT retention becomes more difficult each year and can impact district innovation if not addressed. Recent studies have revealed that IT professionals have the lowest intention to stay in their job in relation to all business functions and 7 in 10 digital leaders say their business is unable to keep up with the pace of change due to labor shortages.
But IT teams don’t need to throw in the towel – here are four ways to leverage professional and managed technology services and/or partner with experienced managed service providers (MSPs) to mitigate challenges, reduce burnout and improve retention:
1. A respite for IT teams
The number of systems, devices, data, compliance, networks, and more that education IT teams oversee is staggering. IT workloads were already increasing before COVID-19, but the pandemic has accelerated 1:1 initiatives, leading to an explosion in the number of connected devices requiring support, networks needing optimization to handle the increase in connectivity and systems requiring protection against increasing cyberattacks. The result? Stressed and overburdened technology teams with too many tasks to complete and forced to prioritize ruthlessly, often resulting in daily maintenance falling through the cracks.