How workers in Europe go about getting an IT upgrade

Relations between workers and their IT departments seem to vary from country to country more widely than you might expect.

What brings us to this conclusion? Recent research from online backup provider Mozy shows that, when employees want an upgrade to their computer, laptop or company phone, they go about it in quite different ways!

In Germany,  the most popular reason was to state a sound business reason for receiving an upgrade, directly to the line manager. Clearly, Germans expect a rational response, and are accustomed to accepting the decision. Their next course of action was to fill out the proper form to be passed to procurement or the IT department. Manipulation (claiming new hardware for a new starter) was firmly at the bottom of the list.

In France, though, 20% of workers seem more than happy with the strategy of deliberately breaking their IT equipment in order to request a replacement! To be fair to the French, that's not the most popular option: 32% said their first choice of action would be to fill out a form.

But in the UK, form filling is decidedly unpopular: only 16% said they'd opt for that course. Meanwhile, 21% of British IT users are most likely to trade in their device at a local store to get a new one for themselves.

Perhaps one of the benefits of using outsourced Bristol IT support is that companies like us are called on to solve problems and give technical advice, less to deal with internal politics such as who gets which phone or computer.

Or perhaps the best decision for equipment-conscious firms to make is to go the IT leasing-plus-support route. That way, you're scheduled for regular equipment upgrades and your employees will have fewer worries about their gear going out of date!