Stress in IT suggests more should outsource

45% of IT directors in manufacturing say not having their voices heard at board level is the biggest stress problem. And for 42% the economic climate is adding to their woes. These are among findings from the Pressure Point Index V (PPI V), outsourcing services firm Synstar’s annual poll of 700 European IT directors across industry and commerce. It paints a pessimistic picture of European IT directors struggling to add value, maintain system stability and manage workloads, with a four year peak in stress levels. Indeed, it finds stress levels have been rising steadily by 2% per annum since 2002’s PPI III report. UK IT directors lay mid-table, below IT directors in Spain, Ireland and France but above their counterparts in Germany and Holland, who worry least. In manufacturing, demanding targets from bosses (23%) and feeling that they’re losing control (29%) are pushing IT directors to the brink, says Synstar’s survey. Also, just over two thirds (64%) of IT directors fear for job security – troubled by pressure to derive ROI from IT (75%) and cut costs (66%), as well as the pressure to keep IT systems secure (46%). For 60% of the industry’s IT directors, it boils down to work loads: in fact that the vast majority say their health and personal relationships are suffering, with 95% taking calls out of hours. Russell Flower, director of managed services at Synstar, observes: “Today’s IT directors wear two hats. On one it says ‘IT strategist’ while the other reads ‘IT fire-fighter’, but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to wear both.” Unsurprisingly, he suggests avoiding the situation by handing over infrastructure maintenance, network monitoring and desktop support to third party companies like his own. “Delegating that headache enables the IT function to spend more time wearing the strategist’s hat and adding value to the business.”