Stress is a part of life. However, if the levels of stress aren't controlled and managed in both your work and the personal parts of your life, too much stress can be harmful to your health. The bad news is that because of the rapid pace and changing technology, most IT and data storage jobs are more stressful than other occupations. In today's tight economic climate, budget and staff cutbacks are also major contributors to a rising level of stress. And when stress is routinely running at a high level, job satisfaction is low.
According to a recent Information Week annual salary survey, more than 50% of IT workers say their jobs are more stressful than a year ago. We've all heard the old refrain: "Work smarter. Do more with less and increase productivity ... yada, yada, yada," says Paul Wittes, supervisor, clinical quality, for FGI in Ontario, Canada, a firm that helps companies with their employee assistance programs. Wittes feels that such clich?tatements from management only contribute to an elevated stress level.
In these tough times, I asked some storage managers to name what stresses them the most. Dale Hosimer, storage manager for the Chicago Board Options Exchange, says he really gets frustrated "trying to sort out the abundance of misinformation or half-truths from storage vendors."
Rusty Hudson, a system programmer and storage manager for the South Trust Bank in Homewood, AL, gets riled up when "users make no genuine attempt to determine what caused their problems prior to yelling for help." Another thing that gets Hudson's blood pressure climbing is when he encounters political infighting between department heads that reminds him of clashes between feudal overlords.
When stress is low, employees are happier with their work. Other good things follow: They care more about the quality of their work, are more committed to their company, have higher retention rates and are more productive. Less stressed employees feel that their work makes a difference and that their supervisors listen to their opinions.
Hosimer says the most satisfying part of his job is "when everything comes together" and when he realizes that he has directly helped in the implementation or completion of a project. "Most of the time," he adds, "doing backup and recovery, you don't directly see how your job affects other people in your company. I mete out space, and make sure that the necessary servers and files are backed up, but generally there is no feedback."
According to a study by Bavendam Research Inc., in Mercer Island, WA, job satisfaction is influenced by: opportunity, stress, leadership (the boss), work standards, fair rewards and adequate authority, in that order.
For high-tech workers, the opportunity to learn new things, and participate in interesting projects is the number one motivator in increasing job satisfaction and relieving stress. In addition, The Bavendam study suggests that the little things a supervisor does can go a long way to lessen stress. For example, a boss can "distribute work more evenly among work groups, remove unnecessary red tape and manage the number of interruptions" their employees encounter each day.
Specifically regarding storage jobs, one of best ways to reduce stress is to establish reasonable, agreed-upon expectations among the departments that storage serves. This means setting priorities and workloads and then documenting all of this in a service level agreement. Then, when two or more things break at once, the thing that gets fixed first isn't decided by who is yelling the loudest. Stress will never go away. The key, says FGI's Wittes, "is how we manage our stress."
