Rising inflation and the threat of recession has had an adverse effect on IT leaders and their teams over the last six months, even as their workloads increased.
A study by the integration and automation platform SnapLogic found that 87% of IT decision-makers in the UK and U.S. have been working under pressure. They attributed that to reduced headcount and shrinking budgets.
Rising inflation and the threat of recession has had an adverse effect on IT leaders and their teams. @SnapLogic #HR #HRTech Click To TweetOver half of the respondents (59%) said they either planned to or already had decreased their IT budget as a direct result of economic worries. Nearly half (44%) said they either plan to freeze or reduce — or have already reduced — their IT headcount.
Despite all this, SnapLogic found that over a quarter of UK respondents (29.1%) are hiring or plan to hire new workers. In the U.S., more than half of the respondents planned to do so.
Rising Demands and Mental Health
In terms of technology work, the No. 1 demand tech teams now face is integrating new applications and platforms (48%). The next top two involve dealing with challenges caused by shadow IT (47%) and managing legacy systems (40%).
Meanwhile, a third of the respondents in the UK (33%) said they are already looking at low code/no code technologies as a way to meet the demands of business and increasing IT workloads. Only 25% in the U.S. said the same thing.
SnapLogic said that fewer than half of respondents (45%) believed that reduced or limited resources would mean their IT department would have to delay or cancel critical work. At the same time, 35% said critical work will take longer to complete. Not surprisingly, 35% said they will have to work longer hours to meet targets and deliver on time. That, said SnapLogic, is “a worrying figure considering wider issues with workplace stress and mental health concerns.”
Survival Techniques
To manage their workloads, IT leaders are adopting different methods, the study found. More than half of respondents (57%) said they were empowering their non-IT users to take on routine technology tasks, and also were investing in artificial intelligence and automation to eliminate manual work (54%).
Additionally, while 50% of respondents said they were recruiting or training additional staff, a smaller percentage (31%) are de-prioritizing or canceling projects.
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