by In conventional usage, boredom is an emotional and occasionally psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is not interested in their surroundings, or feels that a day or period is dull or tedious. It is also understood by scholars as a modern phenomenon which has a cultural dimension. “There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But whatever it is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for depression or apathy. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioural, medical and social consequences.” According to BBC News, boredom “can be a dangerous and disruptive state of mind that damages your health”; yet research ” suggests that without boredom we couldn’t achieve our creative feats.”
In Experience Without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity, Elizabeth Goodstein traces the modern discourse on boredom through literary, philosophical, and sociological texts to find that as “a discursively articulated phenomenon, boredom is at once objective and subjective, emotion and intellectualization not just a response to the modern world but also a historically constituted strategy for coping with its discontents.” In both conceptions, boredom has to do fundamentally with an experience of time and problems of meaning.
In the workplace
Boreout is a management theory that posits that lack of work, boredom, and consequent lack of satisfaction are a common malaise affecting individuals working in modern organizations, especially in office-based white collar jobs. This theory was first expounded in 2007 in Diagnose Boreout, a book by Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business consultants. They claim the absence of meaningful tasks, rather than the presence of stress, is many workers’ chief problem.
A “banishment room” (also known as a “chasing-out-room” and a “boredom room”) is a modern employee exit management strategy whereby employees are transferred to a department where they are assigned meaningless work until they become disheartened enough to quit. Since the resignation is voluntary, the employee would not be eligible for certain benefits. The legality and ethics of the practice is questionable and may be construed as constructive dismissal by the courts in some regions.
Boredom syndrome is a psychological disorder that causes physical illness, mainly caused by mental underload at the workplace due to lack of either adequate quantitative or qualitative workload. One reason for bore-out could be that the initial job description does not match the actual work.
This theory was first expounded in 2007 in Diagnose Boreout, a book by Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business consultants.
Consequences for Employee
Consequences of boreout for employees include dissatisfaction, fatigue as well as ennui and low self-esteem. The paradox of boreout is that despite hating the situation, employees feel unable to ask for more challenging tasks, to raise the situation with superiors or even look for a new job. The authors do however propose a solution: first, one must analyse one’s personal job situation, then look for a solution within the company and finally if that does not help, look for a new job. If all else fails, turning to friends, family, or other co-workers for support can be extremely beneficial until any of the previously listed options become viable.
Consequences for Business
According to Prammer, boreout can also have a variety of effects on businesses:
- Whereabouts of dissatisfied employees, who do not work because they have internally terminated, cost the company money.
- If employees actively quit internally, they can damage the operation by demonstrating their ability to mentally restore the employment contract.
- The qualification of the employee is not recognized (the company can not use its potential).
- The qualified employee changes jobs (and takes his experience), which can endanger entire business locations.
- As long as a recession continues, the affected employee remains in the company and leaves the company at the appropriate opportunity. In-house, a problem of distribution of work orders arises.
- Tabooing causes real problems to go undetected.
- Whole generations of employees are lost (because they have no opportunity to fully realize their potential).
