Can a Tech-Savvy Employee or Relative Just Handle Our IT?

When informal IT can work

Informal support is most likely to work when:

• The office is small, and most tools are cloud subscriptions.
• You don't hold regulated data such as tax records, health information or client legal files.
• No client, insurer or regulator requires specific security controls or evidence.
• A day of downtime would be inconvenient, not a crisis.
• The person helping has real experience and the time to do it.

If that describes you, informal support may be a reasonable choice for now. Be honest with yourself about whether it does.

Where it usually breaks down

• Availability. Problems don't wait for evenings or weekends, and the helper may be busy, on vacation or gone.
• Documentation. The setup lives in one person's head. Nobody else knows the firewall password or who registered the domain.
• Account ownership. Admin accounts, domain registrations and software licenses end up in a personal name or a personal email address.
• Security work that never gets prioritized. Patching, reviewing alerts, verifying that backups completed and removing former employees' access are easy to put off.
• Awkward accountability. It's hard to hold a relative or a favorite employee to a service standard.

That's not a criticism of the person helping. They're being asked to do a second job.

The real question isn't "can they?" but "should they?"

Of course an employee can "do" your IT. The better question is whether they should.

• Is this the best use of their time? You hired them for a different job. Do you want them working on IT instead of the work you hired them for?
• Are they paid for it, or is it an add-on? Extra work on top of a full-time job, with no extra pay, is a common route to resentment.
• What if they burn out or leave? The added stress can wear a person down. If they go, you lose the person and the knowledge, and you start over.
• Is IT really their strength? For most informal helpers it's a side interest, not a career. Do they track security events that need attention right away, or do they finish their paying project before the deadline first?

How to reduce the risk if you keep it in-house

1. Put ownership in the business's name. Admin accounts, the domain registrar, DNS, Microsoft 365 and licenses should use company-controlled accounts, with at least two people who can get in. Our article on who controls your accounts explains why.
2. Write it down. Keep a simple record of systems, vendors, renewal dates and where credentials are stored in a company password manager.
3. Turn on the basics. MFA, automatic updates, and backups whose completion is verified. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup are included in plans and run daily; desktop, server and BCDR backup are paid add-ons. See does your backup actually restore files?
4. Have a plan for bigger problems. Know who you'd call for a security incident or a failure the helper can't fix.
5. Review it once a year. Ask whether the business has outgrown this arrangement.

A middle ground

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some firms keep an internal person for day-to-day help and bring in a provider for security, monitoring and escalation. That's often called co-managed IT. Others start with a one-time project, such as cleaning up Microsoft 365, documenting the network or reviewing backups, before deciding on anything ongoing.

Blue Tree Technology® sometimes takes on one-time project or assessment work for businesses that are likely to grow into an ongoing partnership. If we're not the right fit, we'll point you to someone who can help.

Related Blue Tree Technology® pages

• Managed IT or an Internal Employee? Compare the Work Before the Cost
• How Small Can a Business Be Before Managed IT Makes Sense?
• Co-managed IT

Still have a question?

Ask Little Sprout for general information. To talk through whether your current arrangement fits where your business is headed, schedule a free 15-minute discovery call.