Almost half of IT teams are burnt out as a result of war rooms, as ‘blame game’ culture becomes the norm for most organizations

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The blame game is causing talent loss throughout the IT industry

Stress
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New research has found that almost half (49%) of IT teams are suffering from burnout as a result of war rooms made necessary by the rampant ‘blame game’ being played between IT teams and third-party service providers.

A significant majority (91%) of organizations are still embroiled in hosting war-room-style meetings to get to the bottom of problems, increasing tensions, duration of incidents, and the risk of losing talent due to burnout.

As a result of such meetings, 46% of IT personnel have lost out on personal time during weekends and evenings, with one in five (21%) considering a change in job due to excessive stress.

Jumping ship to avoid the war room

The research, conducted by Dynatrace, found that less than a third (29%) of organizations use a single unified platform, along with the same data for both monitoring and managing digital services, which results in IT teams and third-parties working from their own version of events when things go wrong.

This lack of observability results in a blame game between IT teams and service providers, as neither are operating from the same data, in turn leading to the war-room-style meetings in order to piece together what went wrong, who was at fault, and what can be done to remediate the issue.

While the data is based on a small survey conducted at a cloud innovation event in Europe, the data points to a significantly larger problem within the IT industry. Rob Van Lubek, Vice President, EMEA at Dynatrace, said, “War rooms are an extremely negative approach to resolving problems, and against the backdrop of continued skills shortages, can significantly deepen resourcing challenges for many organisations.”

“What looked like ‘business as usual’ five years ago is no longer acceptable for many IT professionals, who reassessed their work-life balance during the shift to hybrid working. The high-stress environment of war rooms and the looming threat of emergency conference calls at any hour of the day can lead to a disenfranchised and disengaged workforce that is constantly on the lookout for their next employer.”

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Benedict Collins
Benedict Collins
Staff Writer (Security)

Benedict has been writing about security issues for over 7 years, first focusing on geopolitics and international relations while at the University of Buckingham. During this time he studied BA Politics with Journalism, for which he received a second-class honours (upper division),  then continuing his studies at a postgraduate level, achieving a distinction in MA Security, Intelligence and Diplomacy. Upon joining TechRadar Pro as a Staff Writer, Benedict transitioned his focus towards cybersecurity, exploring state-sponsored threat actors, malware, social engineering, and national security. Benedict is also an expert on B2B security products, including firewalls, antivirus, endpoint security, and password management.