One survey suggests some reasons for the high attrition rates last year, amid a pervasive Great Resignation movement around the world

In a survey of 250 enterprise IT professionals across North America, the Asia Pacific region and Europe, the Middle-East and Africa from August to October 2021, found that “keeping up with digital transformation” and “keeping talent in technical roles” were the two biggest challenges faced by respondents.

Here are the main findings in the survey:

  • 32% of respondents found that keeping up with digital transformation, and 26% of respondents found that keeping talent in technical roles—were the two biggest challenges their organizations were facing at the time of the survey
  • 61% of respondents viewed their IT department as critical to organisational growth and business strategy.
  • 72% of respondents reported losing team members, with 41% citing a high workload as the top reason for the staff attrition. Other reasons included:
    • ▷ Unrealistic expectations placed on the team (34%)
    • ▷ Lack of executive support (32%)
    • ▷ No possibility of working remotely (28%)
    • ▷ Executive hesitancy to adopt automation (26%)
    • ▷ Lack of critical technology to effectively do their job (24%)
  • 27% of respondents who were Managers and Directors reported that the IT department was viewed as only a cost centre, versus 19% of C-Suite/Vice President respondents
  • 67% of decision-makers in the survey reported they had accelerated their plans or increased their adoption of automated IT service offerings due to the pandemic, with 1% of decision makers having already completed their adoption of automated services.
  • 55% of respondents reported automating IT processes saving the IT department 1–8 hours per service request. For organizations in the survey which had over 50% of their IT services automated, the time saved per service request jumped to more than 16 hours. Of this group, 74% felt the IT department was critical to the organization’s growth and business strategy.

According to Nayaki Nayyar, President & Chief Product Officer, Ivanti, the firm that commissioned the survey: “The workloads and pressure to perform that have been placed on IT teams will only continue to increase. The only way to alleviate some of these stresses and retain technical talent is to implement automation into IT services so that team members can focus their attention on activities that drive the business forward and contribute to the business strategy.”