A report by GFI Software has revealed that 88 per cent of IT workers are suffering from stress and 90 per cent are considering leaving their job due to dissatisfaction with working conditions - up from 68 per cent last year.
Additionally, IT staff are seeing significant impacts on their personal life because of the extra stress. Nearly half of respondents said they missed social functions because their work day overran, while 37 per cent said they missed spending time with their children because work overlapped with personal life.
Workers in the IT sector are increasingly working without being paid overtime too. GFI Software's survey revealed that 40 per cent work up to five unpaid hours of overtime a week, with a mean average of 7.3 hours a week of unpaid overtime.
A third of IT workers regularly lose sleep because of job pressures and this has led to stress-related illnesses for 17 per cent of staff.
While management is still the leading cause of stress among respondents, this figure has fallen from 50 per cent in 2014 to 33 per cent this year. Demands from users, however, has almost doubled as a leading cause of stress, leaping from 11 per cent in 2014 to 21 per cent in 2015.
Sergio Galindo, general manager of GFI Software said: "The 2015 results clearly show a substantial deterioration of the work/life balance and job satisfaction among the UK's IT workforce. This is concerning reading at a time when the IT sector is playing such a pivotal role in the growth of the UK economy."
He went on to explain that smart employers understand an over-stressed and unhappy workforce directly relates to lower levels of productivity and higher levels of illness, mistakes and staff turnover.
"Investing in worker happiness and in systems to simplify the job of the IT department is often far cheaper than replacing over-stressed or unhappy staff," he said.
