“I think I’ve hit my limit.”
“I hate the stress of this job when things don’t go right, and feel like I’m never appreciated.”
“Between the stupid people, the angry people and the rude people, it all just starts feeling trivial and beneath you. You eventually stop caring.”
How are your help desk agents doing? You might not know it, but some of them may have hit their limit as well.
IT help desk burnout, always a problem in this high-pressure role, has not been helped by the additional stressors placed on them (and users) by the pandemic.
Read on to discover what help desk burnout is, how it happens, why it’s a problem for IT departments, how it affects other people inside your company, and practical steps you can take to avoid the human and dollar costs of burnout.
Burnout is defined as “a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.” It is often caused by high amounts of stress, little control, lack of support or clear expectations, and a lack of work-life balance.
And make no mistake: Being an IT help desk agent is an extremely stressful, high-pressure job.
Not only are they dealing with frustrating or rude users, thorny problems to solve, and even five-alarm fires like a down server … they’re doing all this while being made well aware that the clock is ticking and that they’re being graded for every second.
After a while, it’s unsurprising that many IT help desk workers would start exhibiting symptoms of burnout, namely:
Exhaustion: They feel drained and emotionally exhausted. They lack energy. They may even have physical symptoms, such as stomach or bowel problems.
Alienation: They find IT help desk activities and tasks increasingly stressful and frustrating. They may manifest this alienation with cynical remarks about their working conditions or sarcasm about their colleagues. They also distance themselves emotionally from those around them at work, and start feeling numb about their duties.
Reduced performance: Their work suffers. They have trouble concentrating, grow increasingly listless, and lack creativity and initiative. They may also start resisting change by not responding well to new things happening in the company or in the help desk, when in the past they would have easily accommodated the changes.
If you suspect that some of your agents or analysts in your help desk are burned out, look for the above three symptoms. If you are in doubt, talk to them in a quiet moment about how their role is incredibly tough, and that if they’re feeling burned out, it’s totally understandable and you’re there to help them. At that point, if you’ve fostered good communication all along, the employee may open up. Don’t expect or demand it, though – many employees may try to hide their burnout, out of fear for their job security. (Their role may be crushing them, but that doesn’t mean they wish to be unemployed.)
“OK,” you say. “But burnout happens in every industry. Why is help desk burnout something I need to worry about?”
Good question. Let’s look at it from a few angles.
High staff turnover caused by staff burnout, of course, comes with a host of costs, including searching for, interviewing, screening, onboarding and training replacement candidates. Not cheap. Plus, there is the price of losing all that expertise.
In short, burnout in your help desk can easily turn into a massive drain on your productivity and resources.
Curing burnout is incredibly difficult. Once an employee has reached that level of exhaustion, they’re going to need a serious change of scenery to get back to normal.
Preventing IT help desk burnout, however, is possible. Here are some of the best practices we use to keep our agents thriving:
If you have a problem with help desk burnout, you also have a problem with customer satisfaction, staff turnover, scalability and more. You can avoid these problems by outsourcing all or part of your help desk function to Global Help Desk Services, Inc. We become the first point of contact for your employees and customers when they need tech support. We manage their technical issues, resolve their problems, and escalate only the issues that you prefer to resolve in-house. Learn more about the benefits of IT help desk outsourcing.