Organizational change always brings fear, uncertainty and doubt. So when we found that 57 percent of respondents say their IT department is going through more change today than they have ever seen in their career, we expected to also find that morale is taking a dive. That’s not how it turned out. Yes, one in five report serious morale problems. But those numbers are not as severe as last year, especially at large companies. Why is that the case? The most likely reason is that growing IT organizations provide opportunities for advancement and interesting new work. Finding 5.2 gives us another explanation: few companies are cutting back on training, and training has a strong correlation with morale.
Finding 4: Most IT executives believe their departments are undergoing more change than ever.
Today’s moves to new IT architectures and open-source systems are a source of change, but there are other reasons as well: IT executives working with large numbers of outsourcers and contractors in their IT organization are more likely to say their department is going through unprecedented change. So are IT executives in organizations where the CIO reports to the COO. Yet there is no correlation between drastic change and the ways in which business is becoming more involved in IT.