The third annual GFI Software IT Admin Stress Survey reveals that 79% of IT staff are actively considering leaving their jobs due to job-related stress. According to GFI, that’s a significant increase from 2013, when just 57 percent of respondents said they were actively considering leaving.
The survey of 200 U.S. IT administrators also found that the largest source of work-related stress was management. 36% of the sample of IT professionals surveyed citing it as the biggest source of stress. An additional 34% cited a lack of budget and staff to get the job done, as a source of stress despite the perceived improvement in the US job market.
Key survey findings:
- 77% of U.S. IT staff surveyed consider their job stressful up 12% over 2013
- 38% have missed social functions due to overrunning issues at work
- 35% report missing time with their families due to work demands on their personal time
- 33% of IT staff regularly lose sleep over work pressures
- 30% feel they are the most stressed person in their social or family group
- 25% have suffered stress-related illness
- 24% have had a relationship severely damaged or fail due to their job
- 17% complain of feeling in poor physical condition due to work demands
On average, the IT workers surveyed would work eight and a half hours a week over and above their stated working hours, with 23% of the survey sample working between eight and 12 hours of unpaid overtime each week.
Sergio Galindo, general manager of the Infrastructure Business Unit at GFI Software, said in a statement,
IT is renowned for being one of the most stressful white-collar jobs to undertake, now more so than ever given the critical role IT plays in everything from e-commerce to facilities management
Good news for IT Pro’s
In more good news for IT Pro’s a study of 3,022 workers by CareerBuilder, reveals that information technology workers categorize themselves as overweight more than workers in any other industry. This is bad news because there is a link between stress and weight gain.
The problem is so bad that 50% of IT workers call themselves overweight, the study says. Sectors that outpaced the national average for weight gain include:
- Information Technology – 50 percent
- Government – 48 percent
- Financial Services – 46 percent
- Health Care – 42 percent
- Professional and Business Services – 42 percent
FierceCIO says the estimated annual medical costs to an employer for those who are obese are $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.
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Even though a disillusioned, stressed, unhappy, unhealthy IT staff may seem the norm for many organizations, (I’ve worked in this environment) it will lead to a crisis. The last place I managed at, it took a crisis-like job offer for the senior systems engineer to get management moving on addressing some of the very issues identified here. In the long run, they never brought on a high-caliber backup to cross-train and when he left they were left with a hole to fill on the
Progressive organizations need to take the lead and make sure that their IT staff are happy, engaged, and content. Here are three suggestions to do so –
Gamify IT support. Break the ticket tedium and let agents compete against each other, give them incentives and challenges, let them view the points they accumulate. In short, take the boring out of the service desk.
Let staff work right from their email to spend less time at work and more time with family – while maintaining or increasing productivity. No more setting up a VPN, logging into the help desk, finding the ticket, updating the ticket, and logging back out.
Automate everything, set up a Wiki, a FAQ, set up self-serve password resets, take the load off the agents. Some organizational direction towards this can take the effort a long way. Write scripts to automate new users and terminations.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.