IT causes stress - official

While IT has undoubtedly led to numerous business advances over recent years, it is also a major source of stress in the workplace.

New research has found that 60 per cent of UK employees are stressed by corporate IT problems and 62 per cent believe their productivity is hurt by this. This is against the backdrop of almost three-quarters of the national workforce depending on IT to do their jobs.

The survey was commissioned by Mercury Interactive, a company which sells software to make systems work more efficiently.

David Harrison, managing director of Mercury Interactive, said: "We know IT can do a lot of good - we've crawled out of our caves! - but this is serious and it affects all of us. The days of a secretary printing out a report for the MD have gone."

The last few years saw IT departments under a lot of pressure to install the latest systems and now is the time to take stock, Mercury Interactive reckons.

Research from Gartner suggests around 20 per cent of IT expenditure is wasted.