What a single hire really costs
The obvious cost is salary, and a capable generalist IT person in New Zealand is not cheap. On top of that sit KiwiSaver contributions, leave, training, a laptop, tools and the management time spent recruiting and supervising someone whose work you may not fully understand. Many owners underestimate these extras by a wide margin.
There is also the cost of the tools a professional needs to do the job properly: monitoring software, remote access, security platforms, a documentation system and backup services. An MSP spreads those costs across many clients. A single in-house person either needs a budget for them or makes do with free tools that do less.
Breadth of skills
IT has become wide. One week you need someone who understands Microsoft 365 licensing, the next it is a firewall rule, a printer driver, a Privacy Act question or a phone system problem. A single person, however capable, will be strong in some areas and weak in others. Asking them to cover everything usually means the weak areas, often security, quietly get less attention.
A managed provider has several technicians with different strengths and can pull in a specialist when needed. The trade-off is that the person helping you might not be the same one each time, so good documentation matters. Ask any provider how they make sure each technician knows your setup before they pick up a request.
Cover for leave, illness and turnover
The hardest problem with one IT person is that there is only one. When they take annual leave, are unwell or resign, IT support stops. If they kept the passwords in their head or a personal notebook, a departure can leave you locked out of your own systems. This is one of the most common situations a new provider walks into.
An outsourced team does not go on holiday all at once. That continuity is often the deciding factor for owners who have been caught out before. If you do hire internally, insist from day one that admin credentials are stored in a business password manager you control and that the network and key systems are written down.
Where an in-house person shines
An internal hire knows your people, your workflows and the software unique to your industry in a way an outside team rarely matches. They can walk over to a desk, notice that the reception PC is struggling, and help someone with a spreadsheet problem that is not really IT but still slows the day. For offices with specialist systems, that local knowledge is valuable.
They also become part of the culture. Staff ask questions they would never log as a ticket, which catches small problems early. If your business is large enough to keep one person busy full time, or runs bespoke systems that need daily attention, an internal role can make a lot of sense.
The hybrid option
Many growing businesses end up with both. The internal person handles daily requests, user training and business-specific software. The outside provider supplies security monitoring, patching, backups, after-hours cover and specialist project work. This is usually called co-managed IT, and it lets an internal person focus on the work that benefits most from being close to the team.
If you are deciding now, list everything IT currently involves in your business and mark who does each task. Then ask two questions: what happens to each task when that person is away, and who checks that it was done properly? Answering both honestly, task by task, usually makes the right choice for your business fairly clear.
Managing the work you cannot judge
One quiet risk of an internal hire is that nobody above them can tell whether the work is good. An owner who is not technical has to take reports on trust: backups are fine, security is sorted, the server is healthy. Most IT staff are conscientious, but without oversight even good people drift toward the tasks they enjoy and away from the dull checks that protect the business.
An outside provider is easier to measure because the arrangement is written down. You can ask for monthly reports, response times and evidence of restore tests, and compare what you receive against the agreement. If you do hire internally, consider an independent review once a year so that someone with no stake in the answer confirms that the essentials are being done.
In short
- A single IT hire costs much more than salary once tools and overheads are counted.
- Outsourced teams offer broader skills and cover during leave and turnover.
- In-house staff bring local knowledge that suits specialist environments.
- Co-managed IT combines the two and suits many growing businesses.