By Andy McCue, 11 October 2005 15:55
NEWS IT managers work some of the longest hours of any manager in their organisation but they are feeling increasingly frustrated at the lack of recognition and opportunities for promotion and development, according to new research.
The Motivation Matters study by the Chartered Management Institute and recruitment company Adecco found that the UK's long-hours work culture still exists with managers at all levels, who work an average of 8.2 hours extra each week.
This is even more pronounced among IT managers, with a quarter of them working 14 hours or more above their contracted hours each week. But far from lowering morale almost a quarter of IT managers said they have the capacity to do more work and only seven per cent said long hours affects their morale.
In fact IT managers appear highly motivated with more than half (55 per cent) saying they can't wait to begin the working week and only 18 per cent admitting to suffering the 'Monday morning blues'.
But the research claims there is a mismatch between this desire to succeed and the restrictions of flat organisational structures and 'old boys' networks. Almost 40 per cent of IT managers joined their current organisation because of the development opportunities it offered, yet 41 per cent also said their employer had no specific training and development budget.
Richard Macmillan, MD of Adecco UK and Ireland, said in the report: "Corporate UK needs to capture and nurture motivated managers, not lock them in a pressure cooker of glass ceilings, bureaucracy and old school ties. Most employees are willing to make personal sacrifices to develop careers but the milk soon turns sour if those efforts are not rewarded."
The survey questioned 1,800 managers across all sectors during August 2005.
Comments
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1. tom spence
IT managers very often in my experience, although they may have perfectly good IT skills are distinctly lacking in the other important qualities required of a manager. Just one example - they are unable to delegate responsibility and try to do everything themselves.
2. anonymous
As I remember you are expected to be there before anyone else just in case there's a problem, and of course you stay late for the same reason, then you need to schedule in all the work that disrupts the office so you can't do it when there's anyone there.
If you are logical about it you end up not going home and living on takeaway pizza.
I sacrificed my evenings and came in late, and was complained at, so I came in early and the maintenance work was missed out so I was complained at again.
Recognition usually came in the form of more work.
Eventually thanks to my requests for more resources I was shifted sideways and ended up answering to a junior person who wasn't even a manager and didn't understand IT but was quite happy to beat me with statistics all day and every day.
I stuck it out and eventually left to form my own company.
Non of my staff get treated in this manner.
3. anonymous
The story from anonymous sounds all too familiar. In my case I had all the same issues, and in the end I was off work with stress.
And my director at a subsequent meeting that was supposed to be about how to resolve the issues and get me back to work looked me straight in the face and said "we can't see that you do anything" - citing the fact that none of the IT sytems had failed in the previous month as evidence ! Of course the didn't fail, getting them so that they would run for some time on their own what part of that 'invisible' work I'd been doing.
I think that is part of the problem with IT - it's like the lights, no-one sees them (or the work required to provision and maintain them) until they don't work.
4. Simon Allen
Anon of Cumbria is right. I have worked in voice technology for 25 years and found the change of management focus highly damaging.
Nowadays, no one gets brownie points for things not going wrong. They EXPECT things to go wrong and you only get brownie points for fixing it. Therefore, make sure that a few more things go wrong and then fix them promptly!
I agree that many IT managers are not suited to Director and Board posts but most deserve a lot better than they get.
BUT, we must remember that EVERY other department in the organisation - has the same problem. As companies go for smaller structures, there are fewer places at the trough.
5. anonymous too
Anyone ever met a Office of the Company level manager\ Director who came from the IT department? No, me neither. If you want a dead end career, become an IT Manager. Most IT Managers leave their current company to become [drum roll] an IT Manager somewhere else- s'all the options available >_<