Understanding and addressing workplace boredom is essential for keeping teams engaged and organisations thriving, says Dr Madeleine Rauch, who describes boredom as “far from harmless”.
Madeleine, a Bye-Fellow at Gonville & Caius College and an Associate Professor at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge has written about her research for the Harvard Business Review.
“Everyone occasionally experiences boredom at work”, says Madeleine. “But my research has found that one kind of boredom – existential boredom, where employees ask themselves, What am I even doing here? – led to higher turnover and greater employee disengagement than the kind of boredom caused by repetitive tasks or tedious meetings.”
The article is based on Madeleine’s study published in the prestigious Academy of Management Journal of UN peacekeepers deployed in war-torn countries like South Sudan, many of whom experience existential boredom as they perceive their goal of securing peace as out of reach. Yet, those employees who were able to acknowledge their boredom and pivot from the ambitious end goal of peace to smaller, more focused wins, like holding mobile courts and thus strengthening the local justice system, were more likely to stay engaged and sign up for another tour while those who stayed rigidly focused on the end goal were more likely to quit.
“While this setting constitutes an extreme case, the dynamics of existential boredom also play out in more ‘mundane’ organizations like the corporations in which many of us work,” says Madeleine. The article sheds light on how to recognise existential boredom – but also on what managers can do to help their employees overcome it, like setting long- and short-terms goals and celebrating milestones along the way.
Madeleine says: “While boredom is ubiquitous, it does not have to hamper an organisation’s or individual’s progress – on the contrary, managers can help their employees channel their boredom into working towards small wins that build up over time rather than focus only on big, yet seemingly out-of-reach, goals.”
