Two thirds of IT staff considering quitting due to stress

A survey has found that over two thirds of IT workers are considering leaving their current roles due to high levels of stress.

The findings of GFI Software’s third annual IT Admin Stress Survey revealed that 68 per cent of IT staff are looking for a new job due to the pressures imposed on them in their current role.

The statistic is a slight improvement over 2013, when 73 per cent of those surveyed were similarly looking to move to a lower-stress position.

The survey found that 67 per cent of the UK IT staff surveyed consider their job stressful – a reduction of just one per cent from last year.

Stress-related issues were found to affect other areas of the workers’ lives, with over a third (36 per cent) having missed social functions due to overrunning issues at work and a further 36 per cent saying that they had missed time with their families due to work commitments.

The difficulty of maintaining a social life had also led one sixth (16.5 per cent) of respondents to have a relationship fail or be severely damaged due to their job.

The effects of stress were also found to be potentially health-afflicting, with 28 per cent of IT staff regularly losing sleep over work pressures, 19 per cent suffering stress-related illness and 15 per cent saying that work demands had left them in poor physical condition.

“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 ecommerce to facilities management,” said Sergio Galindo, GM of the infrastructure business unit at GFI Software.

“There is a lot that organisations can do to reduce the burden – and with it the stress levels – carried by IT staff.

“Providing realistic IT budgets and staffing levels helps a lot, but there are also productivity changes that can significantly de-stress the IT department, such as investing in technology to automate personnel-intensive activities like deploying software updates and managing sprawling Wi-Fi networks and the myriad of mobile devices that users are bringing to work.”

The survey also asked IT staff to recount the most bizarre, silly or frustrating thing that management or end users had asked of them.

Example responses to the question included:

• “Having to repair and replace damaged machines because users keep hitting them.”
• “A user jacked up his car and used his company laptop as a wheel support. It did not work.”
• “User complained there was a ghost in her PC when IT staff remote connected to it to resolve an issue.”

For the third year running, the most popular complaint to IT by users was: “The user complained they could not print or that their computer was not working, but failed to notice that the printer or computer in question was not even switched on”

Image of stressed worker courtesy of Shutterstock.co.uk