• New research from emlyon business school shows that between 40 – 50% of workers are bored or exhausted
• Red tape making it difficult to complete tasks was commonly found to be the reason for such frustrations
• Companies have a duty to make it as easy a and engaging possible for workers to complete their day-to-day roles

No one wants to be in a job they don’t enjoy. Many of us spend just as much – if not more – time in the workplace as we do at home, with the average full-time employee spending at least 36 hours a week on the clock.

With so much time spent in a place of work, it is important to be able to enjoy, or at least tolerate your time in the office. However, many of us don’t. In fact, it’s far more likely to find work at best boring and, at worst, frustrating or even stressful.

Whether it be the pressures of a high-stakes environment where every minute is vitally important, the tedium of an admin-filled role, or the weariness that comes with negotiating with colleagues who are never on the same page – there are many factors that can ultimately lead to dissatisfaction or burnout.

A wildfire of burnout

Burnout is a term we have heard more about, especially during the pandemic as the lines between work and personal life at home became increasingly blurred. Research during this time found that women, especially mothers, were working late into the night to attempt to cover their professional and personal responsibilities. It wasn’t just mothers who suffered. In 2021, Google data revealed that searches such as ‘signs of burnout’ jumped by 24% in the first weeks of January alone.

As a result, mental health and wellbeing has become a key priority for employers. Even as post-pandemic life has settled back to normal for the majority of us, burnout has not gone away.

 Aside of the mental strain that burnout brings, there is the economic impact to consider. According to a study by Shift the Work, in the US alone, workplace stress is estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $500 billion dollars. And each year, 550 million workdays are lost due to stress on the job, according to data from APA.  

In fact, such intensities in the workplace often leave staff so exhausted that their best option is to quit.

So, it’s safe to say that if you are feeling exhausted or burned out in your job role, chances are you are certainly not alone. But there is no safety to be found in these numbers.

It’s clear something needs to change.  

Are the numbers of those experiencing burnout, or simple dissatisfaction with their work really this high? What is driving such sentiments? And, most importantly, what can employers do to tackle it? That is exactly what Lotta Harju, Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology at emlyon business school, investigated.

What sparks burnout, and how to snuff it out

Professor Harju conducted a study of over 2700 employees across a period of 18 months, both in Finland and in the UK, asking the participants questions about their workplace stressors, how they were finding their job roles, whether they were experiencing boredom or exhaustion, and so on.

In line with what other reports have stated, across the 18-month period of the study, Professor Harju found that between 40-50% of all employees surveyed were either bored or exhausted, or both.

Furthermore, Professor Harju found that the employees’ experience of exhaustion and boredom did not change for the better during the 18 months of the study. If participants noted a change in their experiences, commonly those changes were for the worse. “The findings show that bored employees are often exhausted and that this is not just a passing experience but prevails and persists at workplaces.” Professor Harju explains.

In digging into the motivators behind such dissatisfactions, the study found that the reason why employees can be both bored and exhausted lies in job demands that hinder performance.

Professor Harju states that the often considered necessary, but intense and mundane, corporate processes that hinder worker’s productivity, red-tape, regulations and role conflict were all to blame.

Staff are not bored simply because they do not have enough to do, but because they are prevented from doing it effectively. “Merely intensifying work may not be an effective cure for all boredom at work and may even backfire by straining the employees,” Professor Harju adds. “Reducing those aspects of work that make it unnecessarily complicated for the people to perform may be a better way to improve overall well-being of the employees”.

A watchful eye

Ensuring that admin roles or other mundane tasks have as little red tape as possible, and that workers are not given too high a workload to handle from the beginning, is a good start to making the workplace more comfortable for employees. But more can be done.

As well as adapting working practices, Professor Harju says that keeping a close eye on employees that might be showing signs of boredom or being close to burning out is vital.

Adding to this, Professor Harju suggests that enabling staff to switch their workplace responsibilities up to give them a new challenge, or to reduce their workloads so they are not too stressed is vital. Research has shown reducing stress and placing a higher focus on employee wellbeing can have benefit more than the individual, providing a boost to workplace productivity too.

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