IT teams at the point of burnout

The decision makers of IT being pushed to the point of burnout because of the pressure asserted on them. A new research from Pulsant which is the leading UK provider of regional data centre and cloud infrastructure services said that almost two thirds of UK’s IT decision makers went through the immense pressure in order to keep their organisations running smooth and efficiently in the past couple of months. Approximately 80% of them admitted that this pressure harmed their health and wellbeing. The survey was conducted on 201 UK IT ‘s decision makers – 40 percent of them reported back saying they are experiencing anxiety , 35 percent suffering from unsustainable stress which might lead to burnout if not addressed soon, 24 percent did experience burnout which resulted to be absenting from business. 20 percent have already either resigned or in search of a new job.

With the increase in expectations of 77 percent of IT decision makers have said that there is an increase pressure and it has risen within their organisation from past 12 months.

The focus on security and compliance constituting of about 45 percent , 39 percent of the exception in working with more areas of the business , 38 percent of the IT expectations to provide support and to have knowledge on a wider range of technologies , 36 percent to develop the ageing infrastructure and the last 35 percent being expected to deliver projects quicker. An accelerating change that IT teams are under more pressure to support more critical initiatives and deliver faster results while they ensure business systems remain available, secure and complaint, says Simon Michie.

A divide in opinions on the purpose of IT where in it seemed like both a care taker of information and technology and also the driver of innovation across business. Where half of the business leaders saw the role of IT as a mere help desk front and the other half of the decision makers saw it the innovation enabler responsible for business critical systems. It became influential in board level business decision making gaining the majority of 87 percent from IT decision makers claiming that IT was involved in setting up business strategies. With the 93% of the IT team on the board representing the sector helped in highlighting that IT is now widely used critical function.   

The positive factor is that both business leaders and IT decision makers recognise the role of IT in driving innovation at the same time it is evident that more support and attention needs to be provided to the IT sector for it to perform efficiently and maintain the wellbeing of its professionals at the same time.