3 ways to ease stress on an overworked IT department.
IT staff may become stressed when they’re asked to spend time away from IT infrastructure management to instead manage projects that fall outside of their skill sets, like server migrations or redirects. Learn how to scale the department so your data is safer and your employees are happier.
IT management and administration are stressful jobs. Every year, IT systems and technology infrastructure become more complex while threats and challenges constantly increase. Not only do stressed employees get sick more often, they’re less productive when they are at the office and more prone to making costly mistakes.
Aside from each IT team member’s individual pain points, the company as a whole suffers when daily tasks are left unresolved and the company’s infrastructure is more vulnerable to security breaches. This creates more tasks, more emergencies and more stress, in a downward spiral that can quickly get out of control.
Automating and streamlining simple tasks and outsourcing special projects like server migrations lets busy IT departments work more efficiently and focus on the high-level projects that support and protect the entire organization.
Job Stress and Its Consequences
Surveys have consistently shown that IT admin positions are extremely stressful. In fact, a famous GFI Software survey revealed that up to 79 percent of IT staff were seriously thinking about leaving their jobs because of stress. More than a third reported that they had missed time with their families or important social functions because of work, while a quarter of those surveyed said their relationships had either been damaged or fallen apart because of work. One third said that they regularly lost sleep because of job-related stress and one quarter said their jobs had made them seriously ill.
In terms of long-term health consequences, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Job-related stress causes headaches, high blood pressure, depression, and increased use of drugs and alcohol. And it’s not just the employee who suffers. The company feels the results in increased sick leave, procrastination and poor job performance, while IT infrastructure management begins to slide.
Reducing Stress on Your IT Staff
According to Concordia University, one of the top ways management can reduce unnecessary stress on employees is by ensuring that their workloads align with their resources and abilities, and that what is being asked of them aligns with the company’s own values. There are three ways you can reduce stress on your IT department, beginning today.
1. Reduce Time Spent on Managing Redirects
For a busy IT department, the scarcest resource is usually time. Managing hundreds of URL redirects on a web server is a task usually assigned to the IT staff by other departments. The marketing department, for example, knows which web page they want a new ad campaign to go to, but may not have the expertise to do it themselves. They rely on the IT department to log in and make the change. Using EasyRedir’s redirect service not only simplifies the task; it streamlines the process so that you don’t need to wait for a sys-admin to do it.
2. Keep Their Focus on IT Business Requirements
Your IT department is undoubtedly qualified to maintain your current systems, but special projects like server migrations require a different set of specific skill sets — ones they have yet to develop — and once the migration is over, it’s unlikely they will need those skills again for at least a few years. This is why a growing number of organizations are turning to EasyRedir’s migration services. Instead of taking time away from other important duties to learn and test the many tasks required in a migration, your staff can oversee the migration, while keeping their focus on information technology management and other IT business requirements.
3. Align Your Expectations With Organizational Values
A large part of employee stress comes from not knowing what to expect from an employer. If you hire professionals who are trained — and even certified — to fulfill specific responsibilities, it’s a poor use of them as valuable resources to assign them tasks that fall outside, or below, their skill sets. If your company prides itself in the work it does, you need each employee to feel the same way. Asking a DBA to revise and monitor URL redirects, or a network admin to plan and perform a server migration, is much like asking a physician to cut your hair: They may be more than happy to do the work, but they will also be wondering what outside projects you may be asking of them tomorrow.
