Stress | Bach Seat

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RB | December 16, 2016

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IT Pros Stressed Out This Holiday

It’s the holidays and nearly one-third (29%) of IT Pro’s will be too busy to take time off according to a new study. Unified security management vendor AlienVault noted the IT Pro stress in an article at Infosecurity Magazine. They report that industry skills shortages will have a major impact on IT professional’s time off (paid or unpaid) this holiday season.

The AlienVault study polled over 400 IT pros to better understand their workplace stresses. They found that half of those that can afford to take time off this festive period will spend it worrying about work.

Other factors adding to IT Pro’s holiday stress included:

53% said they thought their colleagues are overworked and overstretched.
41% claimed to have had unfilled vacancies in their teams for a month or more in 2016.

AlienVault security advocate, Javvad Malik, argued that shortages are not always down to a lack of available talent. He told Infosecurity:

On the other side of the coin is the willingness of companies to invest into more staff … Particularly in small, but growing companies where we often see a company’s infrastructure may grow rapidly, yet the IT team doesn’t scale at the same rate.

Data breach stress

Another reason leading to holiday workplace stress cited in the article is data breaches. Almost a quarter (21%) of respondents said that when a security breach happens the IT teams are blamed. The author speculates that might explain why 14% said that would cover up a breach and not report it, if it didn’t involve regulated data.

IT teams are also increasingly ready to turn a blind eye to users bypassing security controls. If it makes their job easier in the short term. AlienVault’s Malik explained there could be several reasons why some IT staff turn a blind eye to employees bypassing controls. He told Infosecurity:

It could very well be because controls may be too rigorous in the first place. Sometimes this is as a result of controls being implemented by those unfamiliar with the day-to-day operations, or even because of compliance regulations. In smaller companies, it is sometimes because of agreements they may have in place with larger companies who dictate stringent security controls as a condition of business.

Someone Actually Complained About ‘Offensive’ Christmas Music on a Restaurant Receipt (grubstreet.com)

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.

Category: Holidays | Tags: 2016, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Alienvault, Christmas, Data breach, IT Pro, Security, Stress

RB | June 9, 2015

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IT Pro Relationships Suffer From Stress

GFI Software released the results of their fourth annual IT Admin Stress Survey. The GFI Presser says IT professionals are increasingly feeling job-related stress. The IT Pros want to quit their current job due to stress. The study found that 78% of those surveyed experienced workplace stress. Almost 82% of respondents are actively considering leaving their current IT job due to workplace stress and dissatisfaction with working conditions.

The new survey revealed a new four-year high in the number of relationships that have been impacted by work commitments intruding on personal life. More than 25% experienced this in the last year, up from 23% last year. Sergio Galindo, general manager of GFI Software observed;

… this year’s IT Stress Survey makes for worrying reading. The 2015 survey results clearly show a substantial deterioration of the work/life balance and job satisfaction among the US IT workforce

Key findings from the GFI survey

78% of all U.S. IT staff surveyed consider their job stressful – up 1% from 2014.
45% have missed social functions due to overrunning issues and tight deadlines at work, up from 38% in 2014.
40% report missing time with their children due to work demands imposing on their personal time.
38% of IT staff regularly lose sleep due to work pressures.
The number of respondents experiencing stress-related illnesses increased slightly, to 27% from 25% in 2014.
19% continue to report feeling in poor physical condition due to work demands, up 25% from last year.

Management and users cause stress

Pressure and unreasonable demands from management clearly emerged as the biggest contributing factor to workplace stress in 2015.

28% of those surveyed singled out management as their biggest point of stress, down from over 36% last year.
Stress caused by the users that IT staff look after jumped from 16% to 23%.

Unpaid overtime

This year’s survey revealed continuing high amount of unpaid overtime required by IT staff to meet deadlines and deployments.

48% of those surveyed work up to eight unpaid hours of overtime a week, with a mean average of 8.1 hours a week of unpaid overtime worked.
47% of those surveyed work eight hours or more overtime, unpaid, every week.

GFI GM Galindo observed:

Realistic IT budgets and staffing headcounts make a huge difference in both workplace happiness and productivity, for example, as does automating mundane and time-intensive tasks such as resetting passwords, patching computers and servers and looking for network vulnerabilities

The GFI presser concludes that for the fourth year running, high workplace stress levels for IT professionals is an issue. The stress is dramatically impacting both employees and employers. These impacts are illustrated by increases in staff looking to find another job. Staff working increasing amounts of unpaid overtime to cope with workloads. A growing number of IT staff are also experiencing substantial disruption to their personal lives as a result of work demands.

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GFI has conducted this poll year after year and the results have not changed. Stress, stress, and more stress.

Happiness is a job in the charity sector (reed.co.uk)

Category: Health care | Tags: 2015, Career, GFI Software, Job satisfaction, Relationships, Stress

RB | July 31, 2014

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Killer IT Jobs

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.

Survey: Work/life divide? The gap has all but disappeared thanks to email [Infographic] (gfi.com)

Category: Health care | Tags: 2014, Automation, CareerBuilder, Gamification, GFI, Health, Self serve, Stress

RB | December 26, 2013

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The Healing Power of Dogs

It is well-known that dogs can lower blood pressure, but they can have more positive impacts on their owners. NerdGraph shared an infographic from medical appointment startup, ZocDoc that talks about the Healing Power of Dogs. The infographic explores the idea that dogs improve the physical and mental health of their Owners. The article concludes that living with a dog can reduce the number of required doctors visits and cut the cost of prescriptions.

The Healing Power Of Dogs – An infographic by the team at ZocDoc

Category: Health care | Tags: 2013, Dogs, Health, Medicine, Stress, ZocDoc

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