Stress, burnout, and IT – do they have to come as a trio?
What’s more stressful? Christmas with the family? Or being on call in an IT department over the holidays?
Unfortunately, workplace stress in the IT industry is no joke. And, unless it is recognized, and tackled. stress leads to employees burning out. Stressed staff make mistakes, take more time off sick, and are more likely to quit their jobs.
The notion that IT is a high-pressure industry is not new. Academic studies, over more than a decade, point to both the symptoms and causes of stress. The results can be both mental and physical.
One scientific study, in the Journal of Pharmacy & Bioallied Sciences, looked at workers in IT and business process outsourcing in Chennai. It found that 56% had musculoskeletal symptoms. A further 22% suffered from hypertension.
That paper was published almost ten years ago. And not much has changed, or at least, not for the better.
Recently, there has been a spate of studies focusing on stress in cybersecurity. One, from vendor SoSafe, found that 68% of European cyber professionals are experiencing burnout. Another, from CyberMindz and Gibbs Consulting, said that a full 80% of its respondents feared they would burn out in the next three years.
Firefighting
Cybersecurity teams are IT’s firefighters, on call to respond in a crisis. But stress is an industry-wide problem.
“IT professionals are constantly operating at capacity and under stress, with pressure coming from all directions and very little opportunity to recover,” says Dan Potter, senior director for operational resilience at Immersive Labs.
“The expectation that technology must always work seamlessly places immediate blame on IT when issues arise. Remote work further blurs boundaries between work and home life, intensifying stress and increasing the risk of burnout.”
Constant pressure, a fear of failure and the need to keep to uptime targets, a steep learning curve and often working anti-social hours – IT works when the business and customers sleep – all take their toll.
And, as Potter points out, IT and cybersecurity specialists are often neither trained to lead, nor to take charge in a crisis. “Many IT leaders are promoted for technical expertise rather than leadership skills, leaving them unprepared for management responsibilities and adding to stress levels,” he says.
This makes it hard for managers to spot problems with stress, and deal with them before staff burn out. And a burned-out manager is also not going to be effective. And there is an unhealthy tendency to ignore symptoms and press on regardless.
“Too many individuals hide or too quickly disregard the signs of stress in fear of being seen as weak and ineffective,” warns Potter.
The situation has not become any easier, over the last year, with talk of redundancies and a tougher economic climate. As one CTO told IT Pro, teams who are stressed because they worry about their jobs are unlikely to perform at their best.
Firewatch
Katie Maycock is a consultant specializing in workplace stress. She advises people in a range of stressful occupations, including cybersecurity.
People under stress, and close to breaking point, will change their behavior, she says. It is possible to spot the signs – both in yourself and in colleagues – and to deal with them. But, she warns, stress starts gradually and, if it isn’t dealt with, slowly but surely builds up to burnout.
“Stress is the precursor to burnout and it’s insidious, it can be hard to spot the signs until someone is truly burnt out,” she says. “When that happens it may seem like it came out of nowhere, but when you start to look back, you’re going to see the steady decline.”
“People may start to feel tired, however, as stress progresses, you will see frustration, withdrawal, anger, and simple mistakes being made,” she warns. “You might start to see people taking time off, drops in performance and people struggling with their mental health in the later stages.
“Once someone has tipped over into burnout, you’ll see apathy, the inability to comprehend work — this can include really simple tasks – being forgetful, changes to their personality, denial, potentially significant health issues and overall, the inability to not only do their job, but also function as a normal human outside of work.”
Firebreaks
Dealing with stress, and preventing burnout, means understanding both what we need as human beings, and what organisations need to support their people. Maycock identifies five areas to watch:
Energy: “Every single person needs the energy to their job effectively, however constant deadlines, constantly needing the systems running, trying to prevent disasters that happen, managing the consequences when things do go wrong, trying to find the time and space to keep skills up will drain energy,” she says. “A lot of people in IT typically don’t just work their required hours, which doesn’t allow them to restore their energy effectively, and is a contributing factor to stress.”
Time: “People need enough time to do their job effectively. If there are deadlines, fires to put out, people working in IT won’t have enough time to do their jobs effectively. If they don’t have the time to do their jobs this leads to mistakes.”
Skills: “People need to have the right skills for the job, however, with the fast-moving pace of the industry, it’s going to be an additional pressure to keep upskilling. Not having enough time but with the fear of being left behind is going to have a huge impact on stress.”
Support: “Support has to come from the top down and from my experience many managers are also struggling to keep up with the workload and the juggling of being a people manager, coupled with delivering what the company needs… If managers don’t have the time to effectively support their team, it’s going to lead to a lot of people feeling alone, undervalued and not supported… Leading to stress.”
Rewards and recognition: This is incredibly important and with the high stakes of the IT world, it can feel like a thankless role. People feel unengaged, disenfranchised and not valued. And if this keeps happening, people will and do simply check out,” she warns.
Maycock’s advice is to regularly check in on yourself, to see how yu’re really handling things. If you see the warning signs, ask for help.
“It’s also important for organizations to take responsibility and accountability for their contribution to unrealistic expectations and consistently looking at their employees’ workloads,” she adds. “There has to be accountability and responsibility on both sides.”
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