Ensuring you have enough IT resource is essential for keeping your business running smoothly and securely. Yet, the reality is that many organisations struggle to build a team large enough to cover all their needs. Tight budgets, recruitment challenges and ever-evolving technology often mean there just aren’t enough people. This leaves critical operational gaps and extra pressure on existing staff.
Recent research we conducted found that 72% of businesses feel they do not have enough IT resource. And this causes significant issues, including reactive processes, operational gaps and stretched personnel.
But despite recognising the frustrations, many businesses resign themselves to the status quo, relying on the same small teams they’ve always had. This reluctance to expand, even as modern demands outpace what a small team can realistically deliver, is exacerbated by industry wide skills shortages and costs making a larger team feel unreachable.
But there is a way forward. In this blog, we explore what you realistically need for a fully functional IT team, the implications and how managed IT can readdress the balance.
Traditional IT staffing benchmarks
Having enough staff to cover every facet of IT is vital. When each area is properly resourced, issues are dealt with swiftly and proactively rather than reactively. This reduces downtime and the risk of costly breaches.
When considering how many people you need to support your business, industry-standard benchmarks offer a useful starting point. While every organisation’s needs are unique, these ratios provide a general framework for resourcing decisions:
- Small businesses: Typically, the benchmark is 1 IT staff member for every 40 users. Smaller organisations often require more hands-on support per user, as their technology environments may be less automated and more diverse
- Mid-sized businesses: The average ratio is 1 IT staff member per 55 users. As businesses grow, they begin to implement more standardised systems and processes, allowing their IT teams to scale more efficiently
- Large businesses: For large enterprises, the ratio stretches to about 1 IT staff member for every 75 users. Bigger organisations tend to invest in centralised management tools, automation and more robust processes. This reduces the volume of manual intervention required for day-to-day support.
These ratios exist because the complexity of the IT environment, level of automation and access to centralised management tools all influence how many people are needed to keep things running smoothly.
In smaller companies, IT staff must often juggle a wider variety of technologies and respond to issues on an individual basis, driving up the need for personnel. In contrast, as businesses scale up and invest in streamlined systems, automation, and proactive monitoring, each IT professional can support a greater number of users without compromising service quality.
What about IT specialists?
While generalist IT staff can cover a broad range of technology needs, the recruitment of IT specialists – such as cyber security experts, compliance officers or cloud architects – often depends on the size, sector and maturity of a business.
In smaller organisations, the focus is typically on versatile team members who can manage diverse challenges. The scope and scale rarely justify dedicated specialist roles. However, as businesses grow and their IT environments become more complex, the need for different types of specialists increases. There is increased focus on regulatory requirements are met and emerging technology threats.
If you do have specialist needs, they must be included in your resourcing ratios or you risk operational gaps.
The hidden costs of growing an internal IT team
While having sufficient IT staff is crucial to uninterrupted performance, there are challenges associated with bringing this resource into your business. This includes:
- Recruitment and retention challenges: The competition for talented IT professionals is fierce, especially amongst an ongoing global skills shortage. Attracting top candidates requires not only attractive compensation packages, but also a compelling workplace culture and opportunities for advancement. Once hired, retaining skilled staff is an ongoing challenge, as turnover can incur further recruitment expenses and disrupt continuity.
- Training and upskilling: Technology evolves rapidly, and your team must keep pace. Investing in ongoing training, certifications, and upskilling is imperative to maintain a competitive edge and ensure your staff can manage emerging tools and threats. These costs, often underestimated, are necessary to prevent skill gaps and maintain operational resilience.
- Salary and benefits: The true cost of an IT employee extends beyond base salary. Comprehensive benefits, pension contributions, bonuses and statutory obligations add significantly to total compensation. As your team grows, these cumulative costs can have a substantial impact on your budget.
- Burnout and turnover: IT teams often face periods of high stress, particularly when resources are stretched thin. Persistent pressure can lead to burnout, resulting in decreased productivity, increased absenteeism and higher turnover rates. Each departure not only means additional recruitment costs but can also erode institutional knowledge and team morale.
- Infrastructure and tool costs: Expanding your IT team often necessitates investment in additional infrastructure, laptops, software licences, secure remote access and collaboration tools. As the team grows, so too do the costs associated with equipping and maintaining their work environment, especially when aiming to keep pace with technological best practices.
Readdressing the balance with managed services
Organisations need sufficient IT resources to perform, but this comes with significant cost and effort. So, what other options are there?
Managed services offer a modern solution for organisations seeking to enhance their IT capabilities without the complexity and expense of building large internal teams. In essence, managed services are third-party offerings that take over some or all elements of your IT operations. This ranges from day-to-day system monitoring and support to cyber security, cloud management and strategic technology planning.
Rather than shouldering the full burden of recruitment, retention and ongoing training, businesses can either supplement their internal team with managed service providers (MSPs) or, in some cases, replace significant portions of their IT functions entirely.
This readdresses resourcing ratios, putting less onus on organisations to recruit large teams while ensuring they have the capacity and skill required.
The cost implication
A significant barrier to IT resourcing is cost. In the current climate, business budgets tend to be tight, with leaders having to prioritise spending. So, how can managed service help ease the expense associated with IT operations?
For an average IT team, you can expect to pay the following, based on industry data and average salaries:
- Salary and benefits: £25,000–£85,000 base salary, based on expertise. With benefits, total cost rises to £32,500–£110,500 per year
- Training and certifications: £3,000–£5,000 annually per employee
On top of this, you may need to pay additional costs for software licenses, equipment and other overheads.
If we take the example of a 50-person company with one IT manager and one support manager, they could spend around £111,500 a year on their IT team, covering salary, benefits and training alone.
With managed IT services, you can expect to pay a flat monthly fee around £100–£125 per user per month, depending on the scope of the contract. This should cover 24/7 support, cyber security, monitoring and strategic consulting.
On top of this, you’ll access other costs benefits, like reduced recruitment and equipment costs.
Other benefits of managed services
Beyond the clear financial advantages, managed services deliver a range of strategic and operational benefits that help organisations thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. By partnering with a managed service provider, businesses gain predictable costs and a suite of capabilities that elevate performance, security and innovation.
- Proactive support: Managed service providers implement continuous monitoring tools that observe systems around the clock. By preventing downtime and swiftly addressing potential problems, organisations can maintain uninterrupted operations and avoid costly interruptions.
- Access to latest technology: MSPs make significant investments in keeping their platforms, tools and knowledge up to date. Clients automatically benefit from the latest security enhancements, software updates and industry innovations without needing to research, purchase, or implement these technologies themselves.
- Flexibility and scalability: Managed services are designed to be adaptable. Resources and services can be quickly scaled up or down in response to changing business needs. This means organisations only pay for what they need, when they need it, eliminating the risk and capital commitment of overprovisioning for future growth.
- Enhanced security and compliance: Security threats are ever-evolving, and regulations are increasingly complex. MSPs employ dedicated security specialists who ensure all systems are regularly updated with patches and adhere to industry best practices.
- Internal focus shift: By outsourcing routine IT tasks and troubleshooting to an MSP, internal staff are liberated from the distractions of day-to-day maintenance. Instead, they can concentrate on high-value projects, strategic initiatives and innovation that directly contribute to business growth.
In summary, here’s how managed services and internal teams stack up:
Do you still need internal IT?
While outsourcing IT support delivers speed and scalability, the presence of an internal IT team continues to be invaluable in numerous areas.
Internal IT personnel play a crucial role in strategic planning, aligning technology initiatives closely with long-term business objectives and adapting them as organisational needs evolve. They oversee vendor management, ensuring that external solutions and services are selected, integrated and maintained in a way that best fits the unique landscape of the business.
Furthermore, they have deep expertise with business-specific systems, from bespoke applications to nuanced workflows that external providers may not fully understand.
The extent to which you choose to internalise your IT operations will depend on your operational needs and preferences. However, in any scenario, internal staff serve as a crucial bridge between the business and managed service providers. In return, your managed service contract can augment the capabilities of these internal members, ensuring they can do their jobs effectively without feeling overwhelmed.
Rethinking IT for the modern business
In the fast-evolving digital landscape, alongside a backdrop of economic uncertainty and skills shortages, right-sizing your IT team is key. It enables you to align resources, expertise and strategic vision so your organisation can operate consistently, embrace innovation and pursue growth.
Managed services make this easier by blending the deep knowledge of internal specialists with the agility and scalability of external partners. This gives you the flexibility to adapt and thrive, while ensuring you have the resource required without overwhelming costs or battling skill shortages.
Most crucially, it ensures you have access to the skills needed, without compromise and dropping quality.
In order for this to work, you need your managed services to feel like a continuation of your internal team. This is where service design comes in. Our ebook explains everything you need to know about service design including:
- How it places your business goals at the centre of your IT
- The alignment process
- How it drives value from your IT contract
