Your company has 50 employees.
How many IT people should you have?
One?
Two?
Five?
What about a Pensacola business with 100 employees?
Is one really good IT person enough?
It sounds like there should be a simple formula for this.
There isn’t.
Because the number of IT people your business needs depends on much more than how many employees appear on payroll.
A 50 person professional services firm in downtown Pensacola where everyone works on a computer all day can have very different technology needs than a 50 person construction company where half the workforce spends most of the day in the field.
A healthcare organization has different cybersecurity and compliance requirements than a restaurant group.
A government contractor working around NAS Pensacola may have completely different requirements than a property management company on Pensacola Beach.
Then there are the things nearly every Gulf Coast business needs to think about.
Hurricanes.
Remote work.
Internet outages.
Cybersecurity.
Backups.
Business continuity.
So instead of asking only how many IT people should my business have?, there is a better question.
Do we have enough IT resources to actually take care of everything our business needs?
Those are two very different questions.
How Many Employees Can One IT Person Support?
You will find plenty of different ratios online.
One IT person for every 50 employees.
One for every 75.
One for every 100.
But those numbers can be misleading because they usually focus heavily on technical support.
How many employees can one person help when their computers stop working?
That is only one piece of IT.
At Digital Boardwalk, we use a benchmark of roughly one full time IT professional for every 20 employees when looking at the resources small and mid sized organizations may need to properly fulfill all of their IT and cybersecurity responsibilities.
Twenty employees might sound surprisingly low.
Until you consider everything modern IT is responsible for.
What Is Your IT Person Actually Responsible For?
Let’s imagine your Pensacola business has 75 employees and one internal IT person.
They arrive Monday morning.
Before they can finish their coffee, someone cannot log into Microsoft 365.
Another employee’s laptop will not connect to WiFi.
A new employee starts tomorrow and still needs a computer.
The conference room television stopped connecting to laptops again.
There are Windows updates that need to be deployed.
Three computers are overdue for replacement.
The firewall needs attention.
Someone received a suspicious email.
Management wants to talk about moving an application to the cloud.
Your backup system sent an alert overnight.
And somebody needs help with a printer.
Because of course they do.
Printers apparently know when IT departments are busy.
Now add everything that is supposed to happen when employees are not having problems.
Your IT team should also be thinking about:
- Cybersecurity
- Software updates
- Patch management
- Backup testing
- Network monitoring
- Microsoft 365 administration
- Hardware lifecycle management
- Employee onboarding
- Employee offboarding
- Vendor management
- Documentation
- Cybersecurity training
- Cloud services
- Technology budgeting
- Disaster recovery
- Business continuity
- Strategic technology planning
- Compliance requirements
- Major IT projects
Suddenly one IT person supporting 75 employees sounds very different.
The problem is not necessarily that your IT person cannot handle support.
The problem is that support is only part of the job.
Why Does IT Always Feel Busy Even When Everything Is Working?
This is one of the biggest misconceptions about IT.
If employees are not submitting tickets, it can look like there is not much happening.
That should actually be when some of the most important work gets done.
Healthy IT environments require maintenance.
Someone should be reviewing alerts.
Someone should be checking backups.
Someone should be managing patches.
Someone should be reviewing cybersecurity.
Someone should be documenting changes.
Someone should be planning hardware replacements.
Someone should be looking at recurring problems and asking why they keep happening.
Someone should be planning for what your business will need six months from now.
At Digital Boardwalk, we call this Mature IT Operations.
Our Fully Managed IT Services are built around continuously maintaining and improving the technology environment rather than waiting for employees to tell us something broke.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as a Pensacola business grows.
Why Does One IT Person Become Overwhelmed?
Usually it happens slowly.
When the company had 15 employees, one person handled IT just fine.
Then you grew to 30.
Then 50.
Then 75.
Nobody stopped along the way and redesigned the IT department.
The same person just kept absorbing more responsibility.
More computers.
More Microsoft 365 accounts.
More software.
More cybersecurity.
More vendors.
More employees.
More locations.
More problems.
Eventually something has to give.
And usually the first things to get deprioritized are the things employees cannot immediately see.
Cybersecurity gets pushed back.
Documentation gets pushed back.
Hardware planning gets pushed back.
Backup testing gets pushed back.
Long term projects get pushed back.
Not because your IT person is bad at their job.
They are prioritizing.
If five employees cannot work right now, those employees are going to get attention before someone spends two hours updating network documentation.
That makes perfect sense today.
The problem appears six months from now when all of those postponed responsibilities start catching up.
Pensacola Businesses Have Some Unique IT Challenges
Running a business on the Gulf Coast comes with a few technology considerations that companies in other parts of the country may not think about nearly as often.
We have hurricanes.
We have tropical storms.
We have lightning.
We have power outages.
We have internet outages.
We have businesses operating across Pensacola, Gulf Breeze, Pace, Milton, Navarre, Perdido Key and Pensacola Beach.
We also have a large mix of healthcare organizations, law firms, financial businesses, engineering companies, manufacturers, tourism businesses, government contractors and other organizations that can have significant cybersecurity or compliance requirements.
Your IT staffing strategy needs to account for the environment where your business actually operates.
It is not just about whether somebody can reset a password.
What Happens to IT When a Hurricane Is Coming?
This is where being located on the Gulf Coast changes the conversation.
When a storm starts moving toward Northwest Florida, your IT team suddenly has a completely different list of responsibilities.
You may need to:
- Prepare employees for remote work
- Verify backups
- Confirm critical systems are protected
- Prepare equipment for possible power loss
- Verify remote access
- Redirect phone systems
- Communicate technology procedures to employees
- Protect onsite equipment
- Prepare for internet outages
- Verify cloud services are accessible
- Plan for employees who evacuate
- Prepare for the possibility that your office will be inaccessible
And then the storm passes.
Now IT needs to help get everybody operational again.
If your one IT person is also dealing with their own home, family, evacuation plans and storm preparation, what happens to the business?
That is not a criticism of your IT employee.
They live here too.
It is a staffing and business continuity problem.
Your technology plan should never depend entirely on one person being available during an emergency.
What Happens If Your IT Person Takes Vacation?
Thankfully, hurricanes are not an everyday problem.
Vacations are.
So are sick days.
Your IT person deserves time away from work just like everyone else.
But if one employee represents your entire IT department, what happens while they are gone?
Who helps an employee who cannot work?
Who responds to a cybersecurity alert?
Who deals with a server problem?
Who contacts your internet provider?
Who handles an after hours emergency?
And more importantly, does anyone else understand how everything works?
This is one of the risks businesses often overlook when they build IT around a single employee.
That employee becomes a single point of failure.
A healthy IT environment needs redundancy.
That applies to your technology.
It also applies to your people.
Do Pensacola Businesses Need More IT Staff Because of Cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity has dramatically changed what businesses should expect from IT.
Twenty years ago, an IT person’s job might have primarily involved computers, servers, networks and technical support.
That world does not exist anymore.
Today someone needs to be responsible for protecting:
- Employee accounts
- Microsoft 365
- Computers
- Servers
- Cloud applications
- Passwords
- Remote access
- Sensitive business information
- Customer information
And simply installing antivirus is not enough.
Modern cybersecurity can involve Multi Factor Authentication, endpoint protection, email security, DNS security, patch management, security awareness training, Zero Trust application control, Attack Surface Management and security event monitoring.
That is why Digital Boardwalk’s Managed Cybersecurity Services use multiple layers of protection rather than relying on a single cybersecurity product.
For many Pensacola businesses, cybersecurity is becoming a job within the IT department rather than simply another item on the IT person’s checklist.
What About Pensacola Businesses That Work With the Government?
This is particularly relevant around Northwest Florida.
Pensacola and the surrounding Gulf Coast have a significant military presence, and plenty of local companies work directly or indirectly with government agencies and contractors.
Those relationships can introduce additional cybersecurity and compliance responsibilities.
Your organization may need to think about security controls, policies, documentation, access management, reporting and frameworks such as CMMC.
That requires time.
It also requires specialized knowledge.
Digital Boardwalk provides Managed Compliance Services to help organizations manage technology related requirements involving frameworks including CMMC, HIPAA, PCI and others.
If your IT person is already struggling to keep up with daily employee support, adding compliance responsibilities to their workload can become difficult very quickly.
Does My Business Need a Dedicated Cybersecurity Person?
Maybe.
But that does not necessarily mean you need to hire one.
This is where businesses sometimes get trapped by the staffing question.
They think every responsibility requires another employee.
You need technical support.
Hire someone.
You need cybersecurity.
Hire someone.
You need a network engineer.
Hire someone.
You need someone to manage Microsoft 365.
Hire someone.
Suddenly your 60 person company needs an IT department that does not make financial sense.
There is another option.
You can combine internal and outsourced resources.
What Is Co Managed IT?
Let’s say you already have a great IT person.
Your employees like them.
They understand your business.
They know your software.
They know that Karen in accounting likes her Outlook configured a very specific way and changing it will ruin everyone’s afternoon.
You do not need to replace that person.
You need to give them help.
With Co Managed IT Services, Digital Boardwalk works alongside your internal IT team.
Responsibilities can be divided based on what makes sense.
Your internal IT person might handle daily employee support and onsite needs.
Meanwhile, our team can assist with:
- Cybersecurity
- Complex technical issues
- Major projects
- Network management
- Server infrastructure
- Monitoring
- Maintenance
- Backup and recovery
- Additional help desk coverage
- Vacation coverage
- Strategic planning
Now your internal IT person does not have to be an expert in everything.
They have a team behind them.
What If I Do Not Have Any Internal IT Staff?
That can make perfect sense too.
Many small and mid sized Pensacola businesses do not need to build an internal IT department.
Instead, you can outsource the department.
Digital Boardwalk’s Fully Managed IT Services provide businesses with access to an entire technology team covering daily support, proactive maintenance, cybersecurity, planning and other IT responsibilities.
You get multiple areas of expertise without trying to hire an employee for every individual function.
For a growing local business, that can make far more financial sense than trying to build an entire IT department from scratch.
How Many IT People Does a 50 Person Pensacola Business Need?
There still is not one universal answer.
But let’s look at the bigger picture.
If all 50 employees rely heavily on technology, you need enough resources to cover both reactive and proactive IT responsibilities.
Reactive responsibilities include things employees notice immediately.
Things like:
- Computer problems
- Password resets
- Software issues
- Printer problems
- Network outages
- Microsoft 365 problems
Proactive responsibilities are different.
They include:
- Cybersecurity
- Monitoring
- Maintenance
- Backup testing
- Documentation
- Technology planning
- Hardware lifecycle management
- Disaster recovery
- Major projects
If one person spends most of their week dealing with the first list, when exactly are they supposed to complete the second?
That is the question business owners should be asking.
How Many IT People Does a 100 Person Business Need?
At 100 employees, the problem becomes even easier to see.
Imagine 100 people relying on one IT employee.
Even if each employee only needs help occasionally, that creates a steady stream of requests.
Then add new employees.
Departing employees.
Computer replacements.
Projects.
Cybersecurity.
Servers.
Networks.
Microsoft 365.
Vendors.
Backups.
Documentation.
Planning.
Eventually one person becomes the bottleneck for the entire organization.
The solution might be hiring additional IT employees.
It might be outsourcing IT entirely.
Or it might be keeping your internal team and supplementing them with Co Managed IT Services.
The right answer depends on your organization.
How Do I Know If My IT Team Is Understaffed?
You usually do not need a complicated assessment to spot the warning signs.
Look around.
You might be understaffed if:
- Employees regularly wait a long time for support
- Your IT person is constantly putting out fires
- Projects keep getting postponed
- Computers are only replaced after they fail
- Documentation is incomplete
- Backups are not manually tested
- Cybersecurity projects keep getting delayed
- Your IT employee rarely takes uninterrupted vacation
- Nobody can explain what happens if your IT person leaves
- Technology planning is mostly reactive
- The same problems keep happening
- Your IT team spends almost all of its time handling tickets
One of the biggest warning signs is actually pretty simple.
Ask your IT person:
“If you suddenly had an extra 10 hours every week, what would you work on?”
You may be surprised by how quickly they answer.
Your IT Person Might Not Be the Problem
This deserves to be said.
Sometimes businesses become frustrated with their IT employee because things are not getting done.
Projects are late.
Documentation is incomplete.
Cybersecurity needs attention.
Computers need replacing.
Tickets are piling up.
Before assuming you have the wrong person, consider whether you have given the right person an impossible job.
One employee cannot simultaneously be your help desk technician, cybersecurity analyst, network engineer, cloud engineer, project manager, procurement specialist and IT strategist.
At least not forever.
Your IT employee may not need to be replaced.
They may just need a team.
How Much IT Support Does My Gulf Coast Business Actually Need?
Start by forgetting the employee ratio for a minute.
Look at the responsibilities.
Ask:
- Who supports our employees?
- Who manages Microsoft 365?
- Who manages cybersecurity?
- Who monitors our network?
- Who tests our backups?
- Who handles major projects?
- Who manages software updates?
- Who plans computer replacements?
- Who documents our environment?
- Who handles technology vendors?
- Who prepares our technology for hurricane season?
- Who manages disaster recovery?
- Who handles IT when our primary person is unavailable?
- Who helps us plan next year’s technology budget?
Now look at the names next to those responsibilities.
If the answer to every question is the same person, you may have found your problem.
Local IT Support Still Matters
Cloud technology has made it possible to manage an incredible amount of IT remotely.
That is a good thing.
But there are still times when having people who can physically get to your business matters.
Networks fail.
Servers fail.
Equipment needs to be installed.
Storms happen.
Sometimes somebody just needs to be standing in the building looking at the problem.
Digital Boardwalk is headquartered right here in Pensacola at 1457 N. 9th Avenue and provides Managed IT Services in Pensacola for businesses throughout Northwest Florida and the Gulf Coast.
Our local presence means your business can have the benefits of a larger technology team while still having people nearby when onsite support is actually needed.
Stop Asking Whether One IT Person Is Enough
There is nothing wrong with having one IT person.
There are plenty of fantastic IT professionals supporting Pensacola businesses every day.
The problem is expecting one person to be an entire IT department.
Instead of asking:
“Can one IT person support 50 employees?”
Ask:
“Can our current IT resources fulfill every responsibility our business needs?”
Support.
Cybersecurity.
Backups.
Maintenance.
Projects.
Documentation.
Planning.
Compliance.
Business continuity.
If the answer is yes, fantastic.
If the answer is no, you do not necessarily need to replace your IT person or immediately hire four more people.
You need to fill the gaps.
That might mean adding another employee.
It might mean outsourcing your IT completely.
Or it might mean giving your existing IT team additional resources through a Co Managed partnership.
If you are not sure where your current IT operations stand, talk with the Digital Boardwalk team.
We can help you look at what your internal team is already doing well, identify the responsibilities that may be getting overlooked and determine whether Fully Managed IT or Co Managed IT makes sense for your Pensacola or Gulf Coast business.
Because the goal is not to have more IT people.
The goal is to make sure all of the IT work is actually getting done.