How to Improve the IT Department’s Reputation in Your Company. You know that your IT department is staffed by competent, qualified and hard-working employees. But the perception held by the rest of the organization may be the opposite.

IT departments, like other essential service departments within organizations, are often guilty of failing to market themselves effectively internally. 

Without understanding what goes on behind the scenes, or the different technical impositions and restrictions that your department has to work with constantly, people from non-technical jobs can feel they are constantly hindered by IT failures and system down-time.

According to a survey of 275 business professionals and 375 technology professionals from CompTIA, 52 percent of business managers reported having “a good relationship” with their company’s IT department.

In some organizations, even when IT departments are maintained in-house, there can be a definite “silo” and the department will have an outsider reputation. IT professionals see themselves as IT professionals, and not necessarily part of the industry that your company operates in.

There are simple measures you can put in place that will easily give your team the boost that it needs.

• Planning, How to Improve the IT Department’s Reputation in Your Company

Always start with a plan. The IT department should have a business plan that sets out objectives, KPIs, benchmarks, and other performance goals.

• Internal market research

You might hear things you don’t want to hear, but it’s best to rip the Band-Aid off and get on with it. Ask your employees for feedback on what is working and what isn’t working when it comes to the service that they receive from the IT department.

Also, ask what else they would like to see, and don’t be afraid to innovate and to think outside the box.

There is no rule that says your IT department has to be exactly like every other IT department in every other company.

Take the opportunity to work with your organization to come up with custom solutions to support the work that it does.

• Promote the work that you do, How to Improve the IT Department’s Reputation in Your Company

What internal communications channels are used by your organization to share information and good news among employees? Are you regularly using these to share the IT news? If not, you should be.

Meet regularly with internal line managers to “sell” your department and what it does and how it can help them.

• Communicate better with other teams

Information sharing isn’t just about self-promotion. Communication is important for collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

If you think of your company as a machine, communication is what keeps it well-oiled.

There are a range of measures IT departments can take to communicate better. One of these is using DeskAlerts to send pop-up notifications about security and systems information to all employees.

Or if something unforeseen happens you can send everyone a message letting them know what the status is and the estimated restoration time, taking pressure off your IT help desk.

DeskAlerts customers are reporting that this tool is helping to improve the reputation of the IT department in their companies. The back-end of the DeskAlerts software has a powerful measurement tool that shows statistics about who has seen messages.

• Get regular feedback, How to Improve the IT Department’s Reputation in Your Company

You can’t improve if you don’t know what the problem is. Getting regular feedback can help to determine which areas need more work and where you are going well.

You can do both of these things with DeskAlerts’ survey tool, sending pop-up notifications to staff. Therefore either targeted to individuals or sent widely to the entire organization.

It’s important to gauge your department’s usability and whether the other teams in your company perceive.