DIY IT support in a small business: the hidden costs

Key takeaways

DIY IT support means the most technical person in the office fixes everyone's problems on top of their real job. It costs their hours, the downtime while they work it out, and the risk of security basics being skipped. It is workable for a handful of people and fragile beyond about ten.

• 3 hours a week of a £45,000 manager on IT is about £4,100 a year.
• Downtime costs every affected person's hourly cost until fixed.
• Updates, backups and leavers' accounts are the tasks that get skipped.
• Around 10 staff is where informal IT usually stops coping.

What is DIY IT support?

DIY IT support is the informal arrangement in which an employee with no IT role handles setup, faults, accounts and security for the business. They are sometimes called the accidental IT manager. They usually took it on because nobody else could, and the business came to rely on it.

• The hidden costs of doing everything in-house
• The one-person department: risks and hidden costs

What does it cost in time?

It costs the helper's time and the time of everyone waiting. A £45,000 manager costs about £29.98 per worked hour, so three hours a week on IT is about £4,100 a year. If a fault stops four people for two hours, at an average loaded cost of £19.81 each, that incident alone costs about £160 in idle time.

• The cost of context switching in a small team

What does it cost in risk?

The larger cost is what does not get done. Someone fitting IT around their job fixes what is broken and has no time for prevention. The DSIT Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026 found 43% of UK businesses reported a breach or attack in the previous year.

• Security updates postponed.
• Backups never tested.
• Former staff still able to log in.
• Admin passwords known to one person.
• No record of what devices and software exist.

• Cyber security without an IT department
• Shadow IT in a small business: risks and fixes

When is DIY IT enough?

DIY IT is enough for a very small team using mainstream cloud services with automatic updates and two-step verification turned on. The National Cyber Security Centre's Small Business Guide covers what such a team needs. Past roughly ten people, or with sensitive data, the load and the risk justify proper support.

What are the options?

The options are a managed IT provider on a monthly per-user fee, pay-as-you-go support for occasional faults, or an in-house hire once the business is large enough. For most small firms a managed provider with your internal person as the point of contact gives cover without a salary.

• In-house vs outsourced help desk for first-line support

What does the accidental IT manager actually do?

The list is longer than most owners realise, and almost none of it is in the person's job description.

• Setting up laptops, phones and accounts for new starters.
• Resetting passwords and unlocking accounts.
• Fixing printers, wifi and video calls.
• Chasing suppliers when broadband or software fails.
• Deciding which software to buy.
• Removing access when people leave, if they remember.

• Build vs buy software: the small business view

How do you measure the load?

Ask the person to note every IT request for a month: what it was, how long it took and whether it interrupted something else. Most are surprised by the total. Three hours a week is common in an office of ten to fifteen, and the interruptions cost more than the minutes, because they break up the person's own work.

What should stay with an internal person?

Even with outside support, someone inside should own the relationship. They decide priorities, approve new accounts and spending, and know which systems matter most. That takes an hour or two a month. What moves out is the fault fixing, the patching, the monitoring and the specialist setup that needs skills nobody in the business should be expected to have.

Which other back-office jobs follow the same pattern?

IT is one of several functions that land on whoever seems most capable. Bookkeeping, HR records and reporting follow the same route. If one person is carrying all of them, the question is not whether they can cope but what their real job is losing.

• Doing your own bookkeeping: what it really costs
• HR without an HR department: risks and costs

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see in offices of 10 to 20: the operations manager spends Monday mornings resetting passwords and fixing the printer. Their own weekly report is late every week, and nobody connects the two.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

DIY IT checklist

Check where you stand.

• Log IT interruptions for a month.
• List devices, software and who has admin rights.
• Confirm updates and backups are working.
• Check leavers' accounts are closed.
• Get one managed support quote to compare.

• The hidden cost audit: score your business in an hour

Next step

IT support is not a service we sell, but the hours it takes from your operations lead are. Tell us what else sits on their desk and we will show what a managed team could take off it in a 30-minute call.