News: Work-life balance of Australian IT Pros Lags Behind US Workers but Equals the UK

Sydney, Australia - February 8, 2018 - The work-life balance of Australian IT professionals lags behind the US and matches UK counterparts, according to a new report from PagerDuty, the global leader in Digital Operations Management.

According to a survey of over 800 IT professionals across Australia, the UK and US , twice as many US respondents (36 per cent) said their work-life balance was excellent versus just 15 per cent of IT professionals in Australia and the UK. However, Australians revealed a significant inability to manage stress versus their UK IT professional counterparts (64 per cent vs. 52 per cent, respectively). The findings contradict the general perception that Australians enjoy a better work-life balance than workers in Britain, and that American employees suffer even more because of fewer days off.

The impact of today’s ‘always-on’ culture is far-reaching, the survey shows. Nearly all (94 per cent) of those questioned across the three countries said that being responsible for the management of digital services impacted their family lives.

The same number (94.5 per cent) said that personal life and sleep-interruptions when on call impacted their work productivity.  One in four (25 per cent) went as far as saying that a poor work-life balance made them more likely to search for new job opportunities.

Commenting on the findings, David Wall, Head of Asia Pacific Japan, PagerDuty says, “This always-on culture, perpetuated by mobile devices and multiple screens, has become the norm for IT professionals around the world. But it’s taking a toll on the employees who have to drop everything to address problems. Without a healthy work-life balance, organisations will have employees who are either unable to perform to the best of their ability or choose to walk away. Our research suggests the famous Aussie work/life balance is a thing of the past for IT professionals, so we urge organisations to take more responsibility for the welfare of their on-call teams to help workers avoid burn-out.”

Additional survey findings from across the three regions include:

•      More than half (51 per cent) of IT professionals  surveyed experience sleep and / or other personal life interruptions due to a digital service disruption or an outage more than 10 times a week.

•      72 per cent of IT professionals say their managers have little or no visibility in knowing when they are experiencing a difficult on-call period.

•      Of the 82 per cent of Australian respondents that rated their work-life balance as good, very good or excellent, 52 per cent agreed that poor work-life balance is just part of the job. Forty five per cent agree their work-life balance isn’t the greatest, but they deal with it.

The report findings can be found in full HERE.

Ends

Survey Methodology

The State of IT Work-Life Balance research was conducted in December 2017 through three separate, regional surveys of IT practitioners in the US, Australia and the UK. The purpose was to uncover the state of work-life balance for IT professionals and how managers and business leaders can ensure the well-being of their digital operations workforce and the services they build and maintain.

Survey Demographics

A total of 814 general population respondents from online research panels in the US, Australia and the UK completed the survey. Respondents work across a variety of industries and roles within their IT organisation. They were asked to answer 14 questions about their roles, organisations and the challenges they face when addressing digital service disruptions––such as interruptions to sleep, family and personal life––and how the responsibility for always-on digital services affects their work-life balance. Three of the questions allowed respondents to mark more than one answer that applied.