According to a survey, 59% of IT professionals work for more than 45 hours a week. Almost half of them said they do not have a good work life balance. 6 out of 10 IT professionals said that they don’t have the resources needed to do the job. VMWare found similar results in their global incident threat report. According to the report, 51% of cybersecurity workers said that they are extremely stressed out and experienced employee burnout in the last 12 months.
We have not even considered the acute talent shortfall prevalent in the cybersecurity industry. Businesses are already struggling to fill the unfilled positions in the cybersecurity industry. To make matters worse, they are also battling to retain existing cybersecurity employees. With great resignation already taking its toll, businesses will have to prioritize employee satisfaction to attract and retain top talents even in those challenging times. Thankfully, there are a lot of things you can do to improve the employee satisfaction level of your IT and cybersecurity team.
In this article, you will learn about seven ways to boost the employee satisfaction levels of your cybersecurity team members.
7 Ways To Improve Employe Satisfaction of Your Cybersecurity Team
Here are seven ways you can use it to satisfy your cybersecurity and IT team members at work.
1. Give Paid Time Off
Ask any individual who has worked in the cybersecurity or IT industry and they will tell you that they rarely take time off from work. This happens because most IT and cybersecurity departments are understaffed and they have to ensure round the clock presence. This can quickly become hectic and starts taking its toll on their physical and mental wellbeing.
If you are serious about protecting your employees from getting stressed out or burned out, you need to encourage them to take some time off work. You can even make it compulsory for your IT and cybersecurity staff to take paid leaves to give them much needed time to relax. This can not only have a positive impact on employee focus but can also minimize the risk of employee burnout and work-related stress.
2. Avoid Overtime
One of the main reasons why your IT and cybersecurity team is stressed out is overtime. They are expected to work longer hours and could not even disconnect even when their shift is over. According to a report by CIISec, 47% of cybersecurity professionals work for more than 41 hours per week. What’s even worse is that some of them even clock in at 90 hours per work. Yes, you read that right 90 hours per week.
As an IT leader, you must track how much overtime each employee is doing. Create a plan to minimize overtime as much as possible as it could have a negative impact on your employees. Try to leave on time when possible and make it a habit. Companies that encourage overtime usually have a high employee turnover rate.
3. Celebrate Small Wins
The problem with cybersecurity is that you win when everything is normal and something did not go wrong so it does not get appreciated or rewarded. That does not mean that you should stop appreciating employees for their contributions and celebrate small achievements.
As a CIO, you need to keep track of how your team dealt with cybersecurity incidents but more importantly, you should also keep an eye on how many days have passed with a cybersecurity incident and praise employees on that. This will go a long way in boosting your morale and keep your cybersecurity team motivated.
4. Implement Rotation Policy
Another great way to reduce the burden off the shoulders of your IT and cybersecurity team is to enforce the rotation policy. This means that all your staff work in shifts so none of them gets burned or stressed out while ensuring round the clock presence and constant monitoring of dedicated servers. Create a schedule in such a way that the workload is distributed evenly among the team and none of them employees is either overworked or underutilized.
5. Offer Mentorship
Ask any employee about the reasons to stick with a particular company and one of their answers would be career growth. In fact, 94% of employees said that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development and growth, according to Linkedin.
This clearly shows that if you can provide employees with a career ladder to climb they are more likely to stick with you. Go above and beyond and provide them with the right career guidance and mentorship to help them take their career to the next level. Encourage and reward employees to take part in training programs and certifications to develop their skills.
6. Add Meaning To Work
There is nothing worse for an employee than to work on mundane and repetitive tasks that provide no value to the individual or organization. If you make them work on such projects, they will surely switch jobs. Even if you have to move an employee to another department to help them find meaning in what they do, it is worth it. The best way to keep employees engaged is to align the projects with their career goals. Automate mundane tasks so your employees don’t have to waste time completing those tasks.
7. Embrace Remote Work
Remote work has been around for quite some time now but it has really taken off since this pandemic started. Whether you like it or not, the remote work trend is here to stay. More and more employees have started demanding flexibility at work. If your business doesn’t provide them that, get ready for a high turnover rate. Instead of choosing what works for your employees and what does not, you should ask them about their preference. When employees get multiple flexible working options, they feel more comfortable and their productivity goes up as well.
How do you keep your cybersecurity teams engaged and satisfied at work? Share it with us in the comments section below.