LATEST INTELLIGENCE
an ever-present challenge in today’s
competitive IT labour market.
That’s because on-call engineers who find
themselves buried in an avalanche of alerts
are unlikely to be satisfied with their jobs.
They will also experience high levels of stress
and report a poor work/life balance if they are
expected to respond to an unmanageable
number of alerts at all hours of the day.
Loss of staff
Many people react to chronic stress by
avoiding the source of that stress. If the
stress is job-related, they’re likely to look
for another job. Once employee burnout
reaches a certain level, you can’t count on
high pay, good benefits, or even a weak job
market to keep them from leaving. You can
replace the people who leave, of course,
but you will need to recruit and train your
replacements, which can be a costly and
time-consuming task. Moreover, there’s a
good chance that you’ll need to replace
your new employees after they inevitably
also become burned out if the problem of
alert fatigue hasn’t been addressed.
Increased sick time
let others know what they’re going through.
If your customers complain about the
quality of the service and support that your
company is providing, management is going
to be under pressure to ‘crack down’ to fix
the problem, which is a main ingredient in
the classic recipe for endless (and needless)
conflict that distracts from your business’s
main objective.
Chronic stress can cause serious health
problems. If your employees are in a state of
ongoing alert fatigue, they’re more likely to
get sick, and they’re more likely to call in sick
even when they have minor health problems
just to escape the stress. Poor use of staff time
Conflict and more problems Since good admins are expensive, requiring
them to spend too much of their time on
unplanned work translates into a significant
hit to your budget. n
If your on-call teams are experiencing alert
fatigue, then sooner or later they’re likely to
Your on-call team’s time is used most
efficiently when employees are proactively
working on planned projects, not responding
to a series of unanticipated alarms.
Download whitepapers free from www.intelligentcio.com/me/whitepapers/
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENTCIO
23