During times of uncertainty and increased pressures on businesses across the world to adapt to changing times, it is all too easy to overlook the multitude of roles the world is increasingly dependent upon to remain functioning.
For those whose IT skills underpin a growing range of businesses to work in new ways, they’ve never been under greater strain. So it’s unsurprising that recent research from Core into the sleep patterns of IT professionals discovered some worrying patterns, including 74% of them getting insufficient sleep, and more than half of them resorting to daytime napping just to catch up.
I spoke to Rye Austin, Core’s Chief Commercial Officer, about the report’s findings — and about the way that human problems like these can easily go undetected for too long, even when organisations are good at tracking technical metrics.
Human costs
“When people get stressed out, they end up getting sick, getting migraines… And with no end in sight they’ll vote with their feet,” he explained. As organisations continue in a state of persistent pressure with changing policy and environmental factors, the losses could be severe. Austin continued,
“When you get a raised departure rate or churn, there will be future design challenges because of knowledge walking out the door”
Around the world, the best talent is always in demand in IT. And for those who remain? “Decreased productivity, reduced engagement… it’s a vicious cycle”.
The problem seems to be the general lack of visibility of what’s behind good IT, which like good communications’ infrastructure, is easy to take for granted — when everything appears to work fine, the sheer complexity under the surface becomes invisible, and in the short term, support people will often want to help and to just fix things quickly, to prevent escalations and interruptions to users — compensating for underlying issues even if that means working longer hours here and there in a way which rapidly becomes unsustainable, especially for those whose job requires propping up systems dependent on legacy technology.
“Truly embracing modern tooling that works, and investing in the future creates resilience and flexibility as well as pre-empting problems”, Austin explained. And while you can get away with overlying fixes on old systems for longer on centralised set-ups, the transition to home-based working has exposed many vulnerabilities and lack of readiness in organisations which have not kept pace with the modern workplace.
A better future?
At least the return to the office should be easier, for those who have made the shift to the cloud, and embraced flexibility. Austin reflected,
“If you’re truly ready for mobile working and you’ve got a laptop, you can work anywhere there’s a desk and a web connection,”
identifying another big win for cloud-enabled businesses as they adjust to a more flexible and socially-distanced future office. Just as its easy to take health matters for granted until a crisis hits, the costs of just getting by with older IT don’t hit home until it’s put to the test…
So it’s not surprising that many IT workers are struggling to get enough rest and feel empowered and motivated at work, and Core’s research comes at an interesting time, when organisations face a real opportunity to make permanent changes in how they plan for the return to the office.
Seizing the chance to embrace truly flexible and resilient infrastructure will empower businesses to face the future with confidence – as well as helping their IT key workers sleep a bit more soundly at night.
Read the full Core report
