One of the main reasons staff may want to leave an organisation is because of legacy 'green screen' applications making their work life hard, according to a new global survey by Vanson Bourne.
The technology market research company surveyed 590 IT decision makers in nine countries, including Australia, and found 86 per cent received complaints from end users about having to work with green screen applications, negatively impacting staff retention.
On top of that, 54 per cent have staff members who feel bored, frustrated, ambivalent and restricted when using green screen applications.
The difficulty of using such applications was one of the main reasons why staff were unhappy working with them, the survey found.
When it came to IT leaders wanting to make their green screen applications more user friendly for staff, about 36 per cent said it would prove to be difficult. Almost one third of respondents said they do not have the rights skills to be able to change the green screen applications, and cannot easily source the skills needed to carry this out.
The amount of time and money needed to maintain and keep using green screen applications was a problem for 44 per cent of IT leaders, with 30 per cent saying it’s too expensive and risky to upgrade their applications.
The survey asked respondents if they were to upgrade their green screen applications, which area would be most important. Integration with other in-house applications was the most important for the majority (60 per cent), followed by productivity enhancements such as in-line help and dropdown menus (58 per cent), mobile access (54 per cent) and user friendly interface through browser technology (44 per cent).
The survey also found 16 per cent of IT leaders feel that the business still views the IT group as just a maintenance function.
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