Almost half (48%) of employees admit they resent their jobs but stay anyway, according to research from Ivanti. That's the kind of statistic that stops me cold. It doesn't take a top-notch workplace behavior analyst to guess that resentful employees are unlikely to bring their A-game (or B-game, or C-game) to work.
We've all heard the term "quiet quitting," but this goes deeper. Resenteeism describes workers who actively dislike their roles yet remain trapped by economic uncertainty, benefits or limited options. Nearly four out of 10 employees also engage in presenteeism — showing up physically or virtually without truly working.
This has obvious consequences across the business, but we're overlooking the massive impact of resenteeism and presenteeism on IT. For IT professionals tasked with managing the backbone of modern business operations, these numbers spell big trouble.
When IT Workers Check Out, Everyone Feels It
The IT problem is two-pronged: On one side, unfocused employees create significant risks and gaps that IT has to manage.
On the other side, IT workers themselves are susceptible to the same resenteeism and presenteeism as everyone else. In some cases, likely more so because of the added pressures in prong one.
64% of IT workers say they're feeling pressure from employers to return to the office, despite 83% considering flexible work to be of high value or essential to their roles.
This creates a dangerous disconnect. When the people responsible for keeping systems running, securing networks and solving technical problems become disengaged, the ripple effects touch every corner of the organization.
IT professionals report a 58-point gap between their desired flexibility and what their employers actually provide. Compare that to the 50-point gap in the experience of non-IT office workers, and you will see why technical talent feels particularly squeezed.
Only 25% of IT professionals describe their workplace as highly flexible. Yet these same people manage the technology that makes remote work possible for everyone else.
Here's where it gets complicated. Nearly half of IT workers say collaborating with colleagues and getting their manager's attention is easier inside the office. This creates a genuine tension between personal preferences and professional effectiveness.
But rather than solving the underlying problem, many organizations default to mandating office presence. This is treating a symptom while ignoring the disease.
The real issue? Many companies still struggle to provide effective out-of-office work experiences. When collaboration tools feel clunky, when getting help takes too long or when technical problems slow everyone down, of course being in the office seems more efficient.
The Automation Opportunity We're Missing
Companies are taking steps to improve remote work effectiveness, but they're not going far enough. 48% provide self-service resources for IT requests. 43%, monitor device and application performance. Another 43% use automation for ticket resolution.
These efforts help, but they barely scratch the surface of what's possible with modern technology.
Despite 86% of IT professionals agreeing that AI-powered technology is important for making IT operations more efficient, actual deployment lags badly. Fewer than half use AI and automation for predictive IT maintenance or detecting usage anomalies — scenarios where these tools are highly effective.
Root-cause analysis and intelligent ticket escalation indicates that fewer than one in three organizations deploy AI for these critical functions. Not great.
Meanwhile, 38% of workers use unauthorized AI tools, suggesting they're finding ways to be more productive despite organizational inertia.
Things Are Getting … Shadowy
The disconnect between what IT professionals need and what they're getting creates more than workplace dissatisfaction. Resentful, disengaged IT workers make poor security decisions. They take shortcuts. They stop proactively monitoring systems or suggesting improvements.
When technical problems pile up and response times slow down, everyone suffers. Sales teams can't access CRM systems. Customer service representatives struggle with system outages. Remote employees lose productivity to technical glitches. Employees start being able to get away with rampant "shadow IT," where they rely on their preferred tools and applications even though those tools and applications aren't sanctioned, aren't disclosed to IT and therefore IT can't manage them. Shadow IT is always a problem, but resenteeism and presenteeism make it worse.
The human cost compounds the business impact. Talented IT professionals start looking elsewhere for roles that offer better work-life balance. Organizations lose institutional knowledge and face expensive recruitment cycles. Poor retention of top professionals adds to a truly unpleasant downward spiral.
Promoting Flexibility and Engagement
The problem is on multiple fronts, so the solution needs to be, too. Better digital employee experience (DEX) tools, which is how employees interact with their organization's digital environment, make remote work smoother and more productive. This encompasses the hardware and software employees use to perform their daily tasks, as well as the level of access and support they receive. By continuously measuring employee satisfaction and productivity within digital work environments, DEX has become a critical driver of success and growth in the era of hybrid, remote or in-office work. Additionally, for IT teams it helps reduce ticket volumes and frees up time to work on more impactful projects that nurture their professional development.
Automation handles routine tasks, freeing IT professionals to focus on strategic work that requires human judgment and creativity. Engagement improves when people feel their skills are valued rather than wasted on repetitive problems.
The flexibility gap won't close overnight, but organizations can start by measuring what matters to their IT teams and systematically addressing the biggest pain points.
This means investing in tools that make distributed work genuinely effective, not just possible. It means automating processes that currently require manual intervention. It means trusting technical professionals to manage their own productivity rather than monitoring their every move.