Well-being in ITSM – How Big is the Issue?

Well-being in ITSM

The IT industry and IT service management (ITSM) community appear to be caring more and more about people these days. For instance, there’s the continued growth in interest and adoption of employee experience measurement. Plus, “people” was the joint-second most-voted-for topic in the ITSM.tools 2019 content poll. Hopefully, we all know the importance of our people to ITSM and to IT support in particular. And if you’ve checked out the 2019 Future of ITSM survey results, you’ll have seen the insight into the issues we have related to the workplace well-being of our people. Thus, as we considered the topic for our latest ITSM.tools survey, we realized that it needed to be focused on well-being in ITSM.

So, please take the time to vote in this quick, anonymous five-question survey. It deliberate reuses three questions from the Future of ITSM survey so that we can gauge if there’s been any movement on our collective well-being – either positive or negative – in the last six months. If you want to know the previous survey results related to well-being, they’re included at the end of this article – along with links to our well-being-related articles – so as not to unduly influence your voting.

The well-being in ITSM survey – please take the time to vote

In terms of your responses, feel free to interpret well-being as either mental or physical – including anxiety and depression or physical health issues. I like this quote from the Mental health Foundation:

“A clear distinction is often made between ‘mind’ and ‘body.’ But when considering mental health and physical health, the two should not be thought of as separate.

Poor physical health can lead to an increased risk of developing mental health problems. Similarly, poor mental health can negatively impact on physical health, leading to an increased risk of some conditions.”

THE SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED – THE RESULTS WILL BE PUBLISHED SOON

Now that you’ve voted, here’s what I promised above:

  • The well-being articles we’ve already published, and
  • The results from the well-being-related question in the 2019 Future of ITSM survey.

Thank you (hopefully) for taking the time to participate in our well-being survey. If you want to read more about well-being and mental health issues, then please take a look at:

The survey was based on 339 responses and it found that:

  • 84% of respondents think that working in IT will get harder over the next three years.
  • Only one-quarter of respondents feel that their efforts and value are sufficiently recognized by management versus 72% of respondents who feel “undervalued” to some extent.
  • Just over half of respondents feel that working in IT is adversely affecting their personal well-being – with 75% of these reporting that their efforts are not being recognized.

Sadly, it doesn’t paint a great picture of working in IT and the effect it has on our people.

Please look out for our well-being in ITSM report

Once we’re happy that we have sufficient survey responses, the results will be made available in an ITSM.tools article and perhaps even a report. So, thank you for voting.

If you’d like to speak with someone about how you’re feeling, or about a friend, family member, or colleague, then please contact (charitable) mental-illness organizations such as SANE (in the UK) or similar that are available where you live.

Stephen Mann

Principal Analyst and Content Director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. Also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals.

Previously held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester and the UK Post Office), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, IT asset management, innovation and creativity facilitation, project management, finance consultancy, internal audit, and product marketing for a SaaS IT service management technology vendor.

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