How tiny tech gripes are leaving UK IT departments struggling

The AI-driven future that most businesses seek is at risk – not because of a lack of ambition, but because the foundations required to support it are not yet in place. Across organisations, IT teams are overwhelmed by minor requests that not only take up their time but also fracture relationships across the business. As a result, they are being pulled away from more strategic work – limiting their ability to build a solid IT foundation for AI-driven transformation.

These day-to-day disruptions are often treated as isolated inefficiencies, but in reality, they are symptoms of a deeper issue: an IT foundation that is not yet equipped to support scale, self-sufficiency or transformation. Without the right processes, tools and digital experience in place, IT cannot move beyond reactive support – let alone enable AI-driven progress.

New company research targeting 1,000 UK IT professionals reveals the extent of this problem. It found more than half (53%) are frequently called on to help employees with trivial requests. Almost as many (52%) believe employees bring much of this on themselves, being mostly responsible for the disruptions they want IT to fix.

A lack of self-service tools is common —

One of the clearest signs of a weak foundation is low employee self-reliance. Many organisations still lack the self-service capabilities that would allow employees to resolve common IT issues independently. Combined with a lack of confidence, this drives almost total dependence on IT teams.

The impact is twofold. For employees, it creates a fragmented and frustrating digital experience.  It means highly skilled professionals are repeatedly diverted from strategic work to handle routine tasks such as password resets or file retrieval. Over time, this disrupts not just productivity, but the organisation’s ability to modernise its IT environment.

Employees are often in the dark about IT —

The challenge is compounded by a lack of understanding across the business. More than six-in-ten IT pros surveyed (64%) believe, for example, that many of their colleagues in other departments don’t understand the intricacies of the devices and equipment they use. 

This is a more far-reaching difficulty than first appears. If most people in an organisation – including the senior team – don’t appreciate the complexity of the tools they work with, they will have unrealistic expectations when things go wrong. It becomes harder to appreciate the heavy burden this puts on IT teams – and why some problems take longer to resolve.

Where AI can make a practical difference —

For many organisations, AI is seen as the answer to these challenges. There is good reason for this – more than half (55%) of IT professionals believe that their helpdesk function is likely to benefit from AI automation.

Used effectively, AI can make service management faster, more accessible and less dependent on manual intervention. It can improve self-service, help users find answers more quickly and reduce the number of routine tickets reaching first-line support.

However, the reality is one of poor adoption, where a lack of standardised processes, integrated tools and inconsistency mean AI under delivers and increases the likelihood of extra work. Just over a third of IT professionals (36%) surveyed say their organisations currently use automation in service desk tickets, while even less report integrations with first-line IT support (34%). 

Without addressing these foundational gaps, AI risks becoming another underutilised capability rather than a driver of transformation.

IT can’t solve it alone —

Having to deal with numerous employee queries about equipment or applications puts strain on relationships with the rest of the organisation. And if different functions are measuring success in different ways, it becomes even harder to work together to tackle the root causes of any disruptions. 

It is not as if IT is unaware. More than eight-in-ten (84%) IT professionals surveyed believe closer working relationships will be key to reducing disruptions. If service management can be treated as a business-wide concern, rather than an operational matter owned by IT alone, employees are likely to gain faster resolution. IT teams gain the space to focus on more strategic work and organisational culture improves.

A more efficient workplace —

We can see that too many organisations still rely on IT to fix every small disruption. The resulting drain on time and productivity undermines growth and innovation in a significant way.

To solve this issue, businesses can’t simply ask employees to do more themselves. The solution is improved self-service, AI-enabled tooling that can reduce routine demand, and closer collaboration between IT and the wider business. Together, these changes can cut ticket volumes, ease pressure on IT teams and transform the digital experience.

More fundamentally, these changes enable IT to fulfil its role as a strategic partner actively supporting business goals, resilience and continuity, rather than a maintenance department using outdated tools and processes. 

Foundations create capacity beyond just operational relief, and AI will accelerate this transition by relieving talented IT pros of routine first-line tasks. Future-proofing relies on this foundation to enhance what it already in place and can ensure the technology will enable IT to lead and develop the whole organisation’s strategic ambitions from the ground up.

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