|
Page 1 of 2
By Info-Tech Research Group
If there is one group of people who are likely to experience workplace-related stress, it's IT professionals. Employees in IT work long hours, often have too much to do without enough staff to do it, and may feel undervalued by the organization in which they work. Many IT professionals would also probably agree that they commonly experience two factors that contribute to workplace stress:
Task overload. Occurs when employees feel they have to complete too many tasks without enough time, which is common in IT.
Heavy responsibility. Much of the work that IT does has important consequences for the organization, and failure can result in a large number of disgruntled end users.
Is the stress of working in IT starting to feel like too much to handle? Read on to learn about the effects of stress and what IT professionals can do to reduce the impact of stress on their personal and professional lives.
Stress and Its Effects
Stress is a psychological reaction to events in one's environment that cause tension and anxiety, often because the individual feels that they cannot cope or manage the situation. A few common symptoms of stress are outlined in the sidebar to the right.
Everyone experiences stress sometimes, and not all stress is intrinsically bad. However, stress is related to several potentially serious physical effects such as:
- Cardiovascular disease.
- Heightened cholesterol.
- Compromised immune system.
- High blood pressure.
Stress has even been linked to reduced brain function through the deterioration of brain cells. Stress also reduces employees' ability to be innovative by causing people to revert to old habits instead of thinking outside of the box.
In the end, chronic stress can eventually lead to employee burnout, which involves emotional exhaustion (feeling tired, overwhelmed), depersonalization (feeling indifferent to others and disengaged), and reduced personal accomplishment (feeling inadequate and cynical). Stress also has monetary consequences that come in the form of reduced productivity and increased sick days.
One thing is obvious: stress hurts. But what can stressed-out IT professionals do about it?
|
