IT Service Desk Lead

at  haysmacintyre

haysmacintyre is an award-winning firm of chartered accountants and tax advisors with a strong, market leading international alliance. Based in the city, our firm comprises almost 40 partners and over 500 staff and has experienced sustained, organic growth, with turnover increasing by 80% over the last six years. We believe this reflects the level of our client service, the culture within the firm and our progressive outlook.
Responsible for providing effective leadership to the IT service desk team to ensure that processes and controls are in place to meet business needs and delivering timely and effective technical support to end-users.
The role requires the ability to manage and motivate a team of IT service desk technicians to meet the company’s IT service delivery objectives.
To co-ordinate internal support and external service providers and ensure effective communication on all matters relating to the systems, delivery, availability, and satisfaction of customer service requirements.

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES AND TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Ideally a minimum of 5 years of experience in a technical support role, with at least 2 years of experience in a leadership role
• Have a good technical understanding of systems including Microsoft operating systems and applications
• Have a systematic, disciplined and analytical approach to problem solving with good attention to detail
• Proven experience in managing and motivating a team of IT Service Desk technicians
• Excellent knowledge of ITIL service management framework
• Excellent communication and customer service skills
• Have excellent oral and written communication skills
• Have excellent interpersonal and team working skills
• Have excellent leadership and people management skills
• Have excellent time management and organisational skills.
• ITIL Foundation certification preferable, but not essential.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and work under pressure.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Have excellent customer facing/customer service skills
• Be able to demonstrate a high degree of flexibility including out of hours working where required
• Be able to manage sensitive and confidential information
• Be able to manage and prioritise tasks and time efficiently, and demonstrate initiative and a proactive approach to daily tasks
• Be able to work collaboratively, with a range of colleagues both in the wider organisation, and with external stakeholders
• Be able to explain complex technology topics in non-technical language
• Be able to motivate and manage staff through appraisal, coaching and performance management

• Lead and manage a team of IT service desk technicians providing technical support to end-users.
• Own the Incident, Request, Problem, Change and all future ITIL-aligned processes, ensuring high levels of performance, accurate reporting and establishing service improvement activities when required
• Ensure that all IT service desk processes and procedures are documented and kept up to date
• Provide coaching and mentoring to IT Service Desk technicians to help improve their technical and customer service skills
• Manage the escalation process, ensuring coordination of resolving parties, effective communication to stakeholders and post incident review
• Manage and take responsibility for the firm’s IT assets and procurement.
• Monitor the performance of the IT Service Desk team and provide regular feedback to team members and the Head of IT Operations \ CIO
• Ensure that appropriate controls, processes, documentation and procedures are in place and followed, and more importantly, kept up to date.
• Help to provide system administration for key business applications
• Manage the user computing environment to ensure that all firm supplied devices are built and maintained to high standards of performance and security
• Monitor and analyse IT Service Desk performance metrics to identify areas for improvement.
• Ensuring the team are properly securing the return and disposal of any IT equipment that contains data, ensuring that equipment and data is destroyed to the agreed standards
• Help to develop and deliver IT Service Desk training programs to improve the skills and knowledge of team members.
• Provide input into the development of the existing IT service desk platform, and the existing processes and procedures.
• Ensure that incidents, problems and service requests are logged, prioritised, and resolved in a timely and efficient manner.
• Responsible for the audio/visual support for the meeting suite, ensuring the technology is maintained to high standards and routinely checked to ensure high levels of availability
• Overseeing and owning the IT Service Desk queue, ensuring that incidents and service requests are assigned and escalated appropriately.
• Ensure that end-users are kept informed of the status of their incidents and service requests.
• Effectively manage staff including recruitment, mentoring, training, objective setting and performance assessment
• Along with the Head of IT Operations, help to develop existing service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor and improve IT service delivery
• Ensuring each work request is worked within our agreed SLA’s, to the highest quality.
• Ensuring effective communication of work request / queue status, and potential blockers, to appropriate stakeholders
• Ensuring effective communication to haysmacintyre staff and partners of any known issues, or incidents, which may affect their ability to serve our clients
• Identify areas of enhancement in our workflow to aide efficiency and / or enhance our ability to increase haysmacintyre and client satisfaction
• Maintain a high level of customer satisfaction by providing excellent service to end-users.