Now some staffing data for you.
The mean salary of a privacy professional has increased by approximately $6,000 in the past two years to $140,529, according to the latest data from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), seemingly showing the value of privacy expertise.
CompTIA has released survey on tech support – top needs are cybersecurity (70% of respondents), securing networks (67%), remote work and work from home (67%), mobile device issues (60%) and software-as-a service and cloud (57%).
That matches with the skills required — 76% of respondents cited cybersecurity followed by software (71%), network support (70%), operating systems (70%), hardware (69%), cloud/SaaS (67%) and mobile devices (67%)
They’re generally happy with their help desk. 83% of respondents either completely or mostly satisfied with help desk support. Asked what changes could improve performance, 56% said better ways to access user systems, 49% want better self-support resources, 40% better procedures for hardware issues and 39% more options for contacting the help desk.
Quoting CompTIA:
Artificial intelligence and automation are taking a greater foothold in help desk operations. AI uses include classifying and routing requests (72% of respondents), chatbots (56%), finding patterns in tickets (55%) and curating a knowledge base (50%). Automation is assisting with status updates (66%), single sign on (62%), ticket follow-up (59%), resetting password (57%) and asset upgrade notifications (50%).
Similarly, a hybrid help-desk model combining in-house staff with outside assistance is becoming more common so routine tasks can be outsourced to free up the internal staff to focus on more complex issues. While 49% of organizations use internal teams exclusively, 46% rely on a combination of internal and external resources.
Why do we care?
As people are quickly becoming more scarce resource – know you’re competing for these same skills too. You may need to grow them. Wages are up, demands are up, and availability is down. Sure, that’s good for outsourcers too. Just remember you need to be KEEPING those people.
