Boreout - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

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 Diagnosis Boreout, a book by Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business consultants.

Elements

According to Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, the absence of meaningful tasks, rather than the presence of stress, is many workers' chief problem. Boreout consists of three elements: boredom, lack of challenge, and lack of interest. These authors disagree with the common perceptions that a demotivated employee is lazy; instead, they claim that the employee has lost interest in work tasks. Those suffering from boreout are "dissatisfied with their professional situation" in that they are frustrated at being prevented, by institutional mechanisms or obstacles as opposed to by their own lack of aptitude, from fulfilling their potential (as by using their skills, knowledge, and abilities to contribute to their company's development) and/or from receiving official recognition for their efforts.

The authors suggest that the reason for researchers' and employers' overlooking the magnitude of boreout-related problems is that they are underreported

Non-response bias

Non-response bias occurs in statistical surveys if the answers of respondents differ from the potential answers of those who did not answer.- Example :...

because revealing them exposes a worker to the risk of social stigma

Social stigma

Social stigma is the severe disapproval of or discontent with a person on the grounds of characteristics that distinguish them from other members of a society.Almost all stigma is based on a person differing from social or cultural norms...

and adverse economic effects. (By the same token, many managers and co-workers consider an employee's level of workplace stress

Workplace stress

Workplace stress is the harmful physical and emotional response that occurs when there is a poor match between job demands and the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker....

to be indicative of that employee's status

Social status

In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....

in the workplace.)

There are several reasons boreout might occur. The authors note that boreout is unlikely to occur in many non-office jobs where the employee must focus on finishing a specific task (e.g., a surgeon) or helping people in need (e.g., a childcare worker or nanny). In terms of group processes, it may well be that the boss or certain forceful or ambitious individuals with the team take all the interesting work leaving only a little of the most boring tasks for the others. Alternatively, the structure of the organization

Organization

An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...

may simply promote this inefficiency. Of course, few if any employees (even among those who would prefer to leave) want to be fired or laid off, so the vast majority are unwilling and unlikely to call attention to the dispensable nature of their role. As such, even if an employee has very little work to do, s/he gives the appearance

Potemkin village

Potemkin villages or Potyomkin villages is an idiom based on a historical myth. According to the myth, there were fake settlements purportedly erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787...

of "looking busy" (e.g., ensuring that a work-related document is open on one's computer, covering one's desk with file folders, and carrying briefcases (whether empty or loaded) from work to one's home and vice versa).

Werder and Rothlin cite research into time wasting at work carried out by AOL and salary.com in 2005. The survey of 10,000 employees showed that the average worker frittered away 2.09 hours per eight-hour day outside their break time on non-work related tasks. The reason most often cited for this behavior (by 33% of subjects; see study methodology for whether subjects could cite more than one reason) was management's failure to assign specific tasks to specific employees.

The authors note that the main response of many companies to these problems is to increase their monitoring and surveillance. Internet use may be monitored and a number of websites (e.g., video game websites or social networking sites) may be blocked. However, the authors argue that these monitoring and surveillance methods are neither effective nor conducive to a productive and fulfilling working environment. First of all, tech-savvy employees can get around some of the monitoring and surveillance methods (e.g., by using encrypted proxies

Proxy server

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...

that carry no target-specific information in their URLs). Even if employers block both sites used for personal business (e.g., social-networking and web-based e-mail sites) and sites configured as proxies, employees with personal Blackberry devices or high-end cellular telephones

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

can simply use their mobile devices to send personal e-mails. As well, if employers begin to monitor employees' telephone use, whether by tracking numbers dialed and/or by tracking time spent on the telephone, employees can simply use personal mobile telephones to make personal calls, whether at their desk or (if individual offices are "bugged") by slipping into an area not monitored by microphones.

Coping strategies

The symptoms of boreout lead employees to adopt coping or work-avoidance strategies that create the appearance that they are already under stress, suggesting to management both that they are heavily "in demand" as workers and that they should not be given additional work: "The boreout sufferer's aim is to look busy, to not be given any new work by the boss and, certainly, not to lose the job."

Boreout strategies include:

Stretch your work strategy: This involves drawing out tasks so they take much longer than necessary. For example, if an employee's sole assignment during a work week is a report that takes three work days, the employee will "stretch" this three days of work over the entire work week. Stretching strategies vary from employee to employee. Some employees may do the entire report in the first three days, and then spend the remaining days surfing the Internet, planning their holiday, browsing online shopping websites, sending personal e-mails, and so on (all the while ensuring that their workstation is filled with the evidence of "hard work", by having work documents ready to be switched-to on the screen). Alternatively, some employees may "stretch" the work over the entire work week by breaking up the process with a number of pauses to send personal e-mails, go outside for a cigarette, get a coffee, chat with friends in other parts of the company, or even go to the washroom for a 10-minute nap.
Pseudo-commitment strategy: The pretence of commitment to the job by attending work and sitting at the desk, sometimes after work hours. As well, demotivated employees may stay at their desks to eat their lunch to give the impression that they are working through the lunch hour; in fact, they may be sending personal e-mails or reading an entertainment magazine. An employee who spends the afternoon on personal phone calls may learn how to mask this by sounding serious and professional during their responses, to give the impression that it is a work-related call. For example, if a bureaucrat
Bureaucrat
A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can comprise the administration of any organization of any size, though the term usually connotes someone within an institution of a government or corporation...

is chatting with a friend to set up a dinner date, when the friend suggests a time, the bureaucrat can respond that "we can probably fit that meeting time in."

Consequences of boreout for employees include dissatisfaction, fatigue as well as ennui and low self-esteem

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...

, while for the business itself there are the problems of an unnecessary financial burden, high levels of sick leave and low company loyalty. 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.

External links

Wasted Time At Work Costing Companies Billions Salary.com
Forget burnout, boreout is the new office disease The Times
Boreout: the big lie about office overwork The Times
Boreout Book website
David Bolchover's website includes articles on Boreout
No-Nonsense Answers and Advice 75 things you can do when you are bored.

Elements

Coping strategies

See also

External links

Further reading