Hiring and retaining capable help desk personnel and support technicians are challenges for any organization. Support staff require both technical knowledge and communication skills if they’re to succeed in the role, yet technically competent and polished communicators are often recruited by multiple companies at once or quickly move into other positions within the firms where they work, where such skills and talents are often viewed as having a greater impact.

This guide from TechRepublic Premium offers advice on how to keep such staff in your organization.

From the guide:

INTRODUCTION

Continually moving employees out of support roles can introduce a variety of problems. Help desk service quality can suffer and impact production across multiple departments. Morale — not just within the IT department — can subsequently plummet, thereby leading to a cascading effect that’s felt throughout the entire organization.

STEPS FOR BUILDING CAREER LADDERS

One way to attract and retain professional support staff and maintain an engaged help desk is by building individual career plans for each employee. Planning growth paths, building career ladders and providing a road map to chart the route whereby employees can develop new skills, experience, specific accreditations and certifications are effective methods for enhancing job satisfaction, improving engagement, promoting retention and assisting productivity.