MSPs are Your DBA Staffing Superheroes During the Great Resignation

Month after month in 2021, millions of people in the United States have quit their jobs and pursued other opportunities.

 
This competitive hiring environment, dubbed The Great Resignation, has made filling DBA vacancies and covering skill gaps difficult. Managed service providers (MSPs) with database specialists offer many solutions that complement your DBA team and help your recruiting efforts.

Reduce Stress on Your DBA Team

The pandemic has put a lot of stress on DBA teams, from significantly increased demands to ongoing understaffing. This environment can lead to job dissatisfaction, high turnover, and negative employer branding.

A specialized MSP can step in to alleviate many stressful parts of database administration. They can provide needed support for new deployments, help with emergencies, and assist with daily operations.

Your DBA team can stay on schedule with important projects, optimize databases for improved performance, and avoid understaffing situations that contribute to burnout.

Implement Automation and Modernized Systems

If your DBA team has their hands full with their current duties, automating processes and replacing outdated systems may not fit into their schedules. These projects can require significant technical resources, and proactively addressing problems gets moved to the back burner.

Obsolete systems demand an increasing amount of attention, along with less popular skill sets to work with. Scaling up workflows that depend heavily on manual input can quickly become unsustainable, especially if these tasks are repetitive or take up a significant amount of time. DBAs get frustrated in this environment, as they cannot work on exciting challenges or take strategic action to improve database operations.

When you bring in DBAs and other data specialists from an MSP, they can handle the heavy lifting of implementing and optimizing new solutions. Automation can improve many database management areas and allows your organization to make better use of employee time.

Modernizing systems reduces or eliminates your dependence on legacy infrastructure and hard-to-source skill sets and often helps your organization get greater value from your technology investments. For example, migrating your databases to the cloud without any changes can improve performance, but fully optimizing them to take full advantage of cloud functionality makes the most of the new platform.

Take On Your Manual Tasks

Some workflows may not suit automation, but that doesn’t mean that your DBA team needs to devote significant time and mental energy to handle it. An MSP provides the staffing required to handle time-consuming tasks quickly and efficiently. They can also look for ways to optimize these processes or recommend new technology that makes it less hands-on.

Routine maintenance and help desk support are two time-consuming tasks that your DBAs may want to spend less time on. MSP staff can take ownership of these duties, whether you’d like them to handle all support and maintenance or specific parts of the process.

Cover Skill Gaps Quickly

Demand for talented DBAs can lead to a longer recruiting cycle, and your team may face skill gaps that are difficult to work around. It takes time to reskill and upskill employees when your external search turns up empty, and MSPs can get you what you need on time.

Some areas where this MSP capability is advantageous include implementing new database technology, bringing in experts on legacy systems, and filling in for missing staff. They’re also invaluable during emergencies, such as handling the aftermath of data breaches and getting systems back up and running after unexpected downtime.

Improve Work Flexibility

Flexibility is one of the top benefits that workers seek during The Great Resignation. The Gartner Global Labor Market Report finds that 43.7% of workers are attracted to roles offering work-life balance, and 25.6% seek out location flexibility.

Work flexibility for DBAs comes in many forms, such as:

• Choosing the dates and times that best fit into their productive periods and their personal needs
• Working remotely full-time or splitting their time between home and the office
• Switching from full-time to part-time roles without losing benefits
• Eliminating or reducing on call requirements
• Making it easier to use vacation time without worrying about databases while they’re gone

MSPs empower your organization to offer your DBA team the ideal work environment for their requirements. You can bring in staff to handle vacations and illnesses, give your DBAs their nights and weekends back, and take over routine tasks to reduce the overall workload.

Accommodate Short and Long-Term Staffing Requirements

Adapting to the Great Resignation and keeping your DBA team equipped with the resources becomes easier when you partner with a trusted MSP for your short and long-term staffing requirements.

Once you’ve addressed your most pressing sourcing concerns in the short term, you can explore ways that MSPs help your DBA team succeed over the long term. You can work with your DBAs to learn more about the technology they’re most excited about and the areas with less interest. Your team can spend more time on their favorite database technologies while the MSP takes care of the rest.

Download our White Paper: Planning IT Staffing During the Great Resignation to learn more.