Do Your Employees Suffer from Boreout?

February 13, 2009

Boreout is not only the opposite of burnout. It's also the result of missing leadership, bad culture and especially
the big bluff.

By Philippe Rothlin and Dr. Peter Werder

According to a recent global survey, the overall European average for employees who feel stressed stands at 27
percent. Of interest to us are the remaining 73 percent—all those employees who place themselves between
"stress level just right" and "under-stretched." Parts of these people suffer from "Boreout." (According to other
surveys, which have been done in 2007 and 2008 by German media, it's at least 10 percent being affected by
Boreout.) This causes enormous costs. For a financial centre like Zurich, it’s about 1.5 billion dollars per year.

But what's boreout? First of all, it's the opposite of burnout. Boreout appears when employees are under-
challenged, bored and disinterested about their work and about their company. Associated with these problems
are behavioural strategies that the employee adopts in order to appear overloaded and keep work at arm's length.
Those people just start to pretend to work: They behave like they are being much more under stress than they
are. When the employee has to perform many mindless tasks, or just doesn’t have anything to do, he easily
becomes detached from his work and colleagues.

Bored employees take refuge in their own world. They plan their next holiday, the weekend shopping trip or sell
their used car on EBay.com during working hours. They use the advantages of modern technology to distract
themselves at work—Internet, mobile phones, e-mail.

Boreout during Recession

You might ask now, "How can you talk about boreout when we currently are in the middle of a big recession?
People are happy to have a job and to keep this job. They prefer a boring job than having no job at all. And the
companies will anyway eliminate jobs that have not been and will not be productive. So is boreout still an actual
topic?"

We say, straight ahead, YES, it is. We daily get e-mails from people who don't know what to do during their
worktime. They work with companies that started to lay off people, but their personal situation does not change,
even given the bad economic environment. Surprisingly, we hear from employees who are still under-stretched at
their work, of companies that do not adapt their workforce.

One thing is correct: Under-challenged employees are now happier to have a job, to be able to pay their bills at
the end of each month. But keep in mind that the same people are still in this unsatisfactory situation and still
don’t have anything to do—despite recession. They are still eight hours at work and only work one hour per day.

And the companies? Obviously, no company would want to have the boreout problem—neither in good times, nor
in bad times. Boreout is still a reality because bad corporate cultures, bad leaders and managers and bad
communication don't disappear from the map only because the economy is going bad.

The Individual Causes of Boreout

You probably heard about Boreout before. But, being sceptical, you wonder how this phenomena can come up.
It's not because employees are lazy. They want to work, they ask for interesting work, but their boss does not let
them. Either he doesn’t delegate—so the workload itself for the employee is not right—or the work is just
qualitatively under-challenging.
After some months, under-challenged employees stop asking: It doesn't feel bad to have some free time during
work and have work finished long before the deadlines. All of a sudden, they're in the middle of a Boreout. They
pretend to work to avoid getting new work—though the situation is becoming worse.
This is the so-called "boreout paradox"—where employees remain in a unsatisfactory situation and maintain this
state by using the aforementioned strategies. Paradoxically, only a few people ask for a clearing discussion or
change the situation.

Culture: Structure or Behaviour?

Depending on the company's culture, it may happen that there is more bad influence on the employee to cause a
boreout. Think about your corporate culture, a key element when preventing boreout. A culture that focuses on
tasks and structures rather than people or a person's abilities is dangerous.

Let's look at a typical example of boreout:

Alex, a member in Bob's team, is under-challenged (as we mentioned before: Bob is a specialist doing the
interesting stuff on his own). He's got free time everyday. His workload is far away from what he could do. Alex
told Bob about this many times, but Bob didn't take him and his wish to work seriously. Bob thus knows about
Alex's workload. And there is Susan—another team leader of the same company—who asks Bob for help. She's
from the IT department and needs help in testing software. But Bob doesn't help, though he knows that Alex
would have free capacity to help Susan. Why is this?

There are two main reasons: First, letting Alex help Susan might be suspicious with regards to Bob's leadership
qualities—doesn't Bob's team have anything to do? Isn't Bob able to lead his team? People might start asking
these and other questions, which is something Bob definitely wants to avoid. So, Alex continues with no work to
do and remains in his boreout.

Secondly, it's about the culture. Bob argues very functionally, "There are no such tasks defined in our task list like
testing software. The culture of this company doesn't allow flexibility. It's a culture that doesn't listen and doesn't
allow help or crossing existing habits—typical silo thinking. Companies have to develop corporate cultures that
promote communication and focus on people, not on structures as we have just seen.

Philippe Rothlin and Dr. Peter Werder are the authors of Boreout! Overcoming Workplace Demotivation published
by Kogan Page.

Boreout vs Burnout

espre Burnout stim cu totii, paradoxal sau nu este o boala in trend. Cat de scuril suna…. dar
da, si bolile devin trendy. Ironic.

Boreout este opusul lui Burnout si “ataca” oamenii inactivi, subsolicitati.

Cei afectati de sindromul Boreout nu sunt deloc lenesi, de obicei se intampla in activitati in
care ar dori sa se implice si sa daruiasca energie, insa le lipseste fie stiinta, practica, sau
raspunderea, fie nu depinde de capacitatea lor.

Se intampla, de exemplu, in joburile administrative, in care 2-3 ore ajung pentru terminarea
taskurilor efective, iar restul timpului este “umplut” de cafele, jocuri online, etc etc etc… sau
in unele magazine, in care apar 2-3 valuri de clienti si in restul timpului vanzatorii nu au ce
face. ( cel putin aparent).

Un tool foarte bun este de a le arata angajatilor cum pot sa umple acele goluri de timp, fie
prin activitati care pot fi facute oricand, fie prin idei si initiative noi. O alta cheie este
motivarea pentru job si pentru dezvoltarea permanenta prin invatare.

Problema efectiva apare atunci cand conducerea nu stie despre aceste momente de
inactivitate, angajatii evitand confruntarea deschisa, din motive gen frica de a nu fi concediati
sau suprasolicitati.
 Home > B > boreout « booth bunny Bork »

boreout
n. Physical or emotional exhaustion and feelings of depression or disillusionment
caused by being underemployed at work. [Cf. burnout.]

Example Citations:
The resulting profile of a boreout victim is remarkably similar to characters such as Tim in
the Ricky Gervais BBC comedy series The Office, and Homer Simpson. Boreout, it appears,
is such a profound taboo that it can only be shown in a comic context.

Boreout works like this: a boss re-fuses to delegate work, frustrated underlings ask for
more to do but are trusted only with mind-numbing tasks. After a while they stop asking
and enjoy the free time at their desk, stretching out the low-intensity tasks with a series
of strategems.

But mimicking work day after day erodes self-esteem. Result: the boss hurtles towards
burnout while at least some of his staff edge towards boreout. The symptoms are almost
identical.
—Roger Boyes, "Forget burnout, now it's boreout," The Times (London), September 15,
2007

Mike might be suffering from "boreout," a condition coined by Philippe Rothlin and Peter
Werder, two Swiss business consultants who recently wrote a book on work-related
boredom. In a society where a person's job often defines an important part of his or her
identity, they say that someone who isn't challenged at work can soon feel worthless and
frustrated.

Their book, "Boreout: Overcoming Workplace Demotivation," was a bestseller in Europe

last year and will appear in the U.S. in September. In it, Rothlin and Werder write about
people who have too little work or lack stimulation from their jobs. Yet, instead of
rejoicing at the abundance of free time, they said, bored workers grow disinterested,
exhausted and even depressed.

"One might easily call them lazy," explained Rothlin, "but that's not true. People suffering
from boreout want to do something. They want to work, but their company won't let
them."
—"So bored it hurts," Chicago Tribune, April 30, 2008

Earliest Citation:
Common stressors, gleaned from recent research into the subject and from surveys of the
wide range of clients who attended WUP courses over the past year, range from external
factors such as workplace noise, lighting, and temperature to organisational problems such
as lack of training, bad communication, unclear work tasks, boreout and burnout (work
underload or overload).
—Julie Bertagna, "Learn how to work under pressure," The Herald, April 11, 1995

Notes:
This term is a play on burnout, exhaustion and depression caused by overwork or stress,
which first entered the language around 1975.
Related Words:
dilbert
facepalm
leisure sickness
microboredom
sedentary death syndrome
stress portfolio
stress puppy
underload syndrome
upshifter
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 @gwonk Hmm. To my ear, "depissed" sounds like it means "no longer angry" instead of
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The new study – which has become a business book bestseller – has a much smaller but more
carefully chosen sample: 100 managers, bankers, PR and advertising agency executives, all working
in supposedly highly charged environments. The resulting profile of a boreout victim is remarkably
similar to characters such as Tim in the Ricky Gervais BBC comedy series The Office, and Homer
Simpson. Boreout, it appears, is such a profound taboo that it can only be shown in a comic context.

Boreout works like this: a boss refuses to delegate work, frustrated underlings ask for more to do but
are trusted only with mind-numbing tasks. After a while they stop asking and enjoy the free time at
their desk, stretching out the low-intensity tasks with a series of strategems.

But mimicking work day after day erodes self-esteem. Result: the boss hurtles towards burnout while
at least some of his staff edge towards boreout. The symptoms are almost identical.

“In a team of six, you often find that two people take on most of the work and at least one has almost
nothing to do. He’s not lazy – it’s just part of the group dynamic,” Werder said.

The authors of the book now run corporate seminars on the problem, which is being taken very
seriously in Germany. It is seen as contributing to high levels of sick leave and very low levels of
company loyalty.
For every stage on the road to boreout there are appropriate tricks. At first, when you are still keen but
underworked you have to convince your boss that you are worthy of more trust.

That leads to what the authors call the pseudo-commitment strategy. The point of this is to stay in the
office for as long as your boss, even if you have nothing to do.

“You surrender free time because you assume that the boss expects this from you,” the authors say.
In fact, it sets a pattern of fake labour. A less harmful tactic is to take a briefcase home with you every
evening, making it clear that work will continue even when you are not physically at your desk. The
briefcase, of course, is never opened.

As boreout takes hold, as underworking turns into work aversion, you become more cunning. You
negotiate for artificially long deadlines that build hours of doing nothing into your office rhythm. Or you
go for “strategic delay”. A team project needs input from someone in another department. So you wait
until that person is absent – in a meeting or on a flight – before calling. He then becomes responsible
for the fact that you have nothing to do for a few hours, or even days.

Boreout has been part of office life for the best part of a century. I remember while working for the
Financial Times in the 1970s that colleagues developed an “Italian Jacket” system. A spare jacket,
kept in the office, would be spread over the back of your chair, a half-drunk cup of coffee would be
placed next to the phone – and you could disappear for a couple of hours. The Editor would assume
that you were briefly elsewhere in the building.

Rothlin and Werder outline similarly old-fashioned work-avoidance ploys that are still in use. A fake
stomach upset that allows you to retreat to the lavatory and flick through magazines remains a hardy
favourite. German business writers have noted a rise in people smoking since smokers were banished
from the building; indeed some companies have noted the emergence of the fake smoker who
pretends to be addicted simply to escape from his desk.

“What is new,” Werder said, “is that e-mail and the mobile phone have expanded the range of
alternative activities for the underworked. He can buy a pram on eBay, download games and book his
holidays. How much blogging do you think goes on during office hours?”

The satisfaction of liberating time from your employer quickly curdles. Then, the authors say, there are
only two options to head off a swift decline to boreout: to talk to your boss and risk his contempt or to
change your job.

Is it you?
If you say “yes” to four or more of these, you could have boreout . . .

1 Do you complete private tasks at work?

2 Do you feel underchallenged or bored?

3 Do you sometimes pretend to be busy?

4 Are you tired and apathetic after work even though you experienced no stress in the office?

5 Are you unhappy with your work?

6 Do you find your work meaningless?

7 Could you complete your work quicker than you are doing?
8 Are you afraid of changing your job because you might take a salary cut?

9 Do you send private e-mails to colleagues during working hours?

10 Do you have little or no interest in your work?

Source: Diagnose Burnout, Redline Wirtschaft, 2007

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 2008 in
Diagnosis Boreout, a book by Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business
consultants.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Elements
o 1.1 Coping strategies
• 2 See also
• 3 References
• 4 External links

• 5 Further reading

[edit] Elements
An absence of meaningful tasks, rather than stress, is the crucial problem for many workers
according to Werder and Rothlin. Boreout consists of three elements: boredom, lack of
challenge and lack of interest. The 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’.[1] They
are frustrated by being unable to either contribute to the development of the company or use
their skills, knowledge and abilities, or get recognised for their efforts.

The authors posit that this phenomenon has been neglected by researchers and employers
because of the social stigma associated with boreout and its effects. Indeed, stress has become
an indicator of status 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 may simply promote this inefficiency. Of course, few employees want to be
fired, and are unlikely to call attention to the dispensable nature of their role. As such, even if
an employee has very little work to do, they ensure that there is always a spreadsheet up on
their computer and they cover their desk with file folders and carry briefcases home, to give
the impression that they are bringing reports home to work on.
Werder and Rothlin cite research into time wasting at work carried out by AOL and
salary.com in 2005.[2] 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 principal reason for this was a lack of assigned tasks according to 33% of the
subjects.

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 not effective, and nor do they create
a good working environment. First of all, tech-savvy employees can get around some of the
monitoring and surveillance methods. If employers block Facebook or Hotmail, employees
with personal Blackberry devices or high-end cell phones can simply use their mobile devices
to send personal e-mails. As well, if employers begin to monitor phone calls (according to
which numbers are called or time on the phone), employees can simply use their cell phones,
either at their desk, or by slipping out of the office and going into the hallway.

[edit] Coping strategies

The symptoms of boreout lead employees to adopt coping strategies or ‘boreout strategies’,
these indicate the appearance of stress and activity, while cleverly avoiding any more boring
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.’ [1]

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 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."[citation needed]

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

[edit] See also

• Boredom
• Burnout (psychology)
• Group dynamics
• Organization
• Social alienation
• Stress
• Office Space (film)

[edit] References
1. ^ a b http://www.boreout.com/BO_English_2007-07-26.pdf A new phenomenon at
work: Boreout!
2. ^ http://www.salary.com/careers/layouthtmls/crel_display_nocat_Ser374_Par555.html
Wasted Time At Work Costing Companies Billions - A Salary.com/AOL Survey

[edit] 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
• Diagnosis Boreout Book website
• David Bolchover's website includes articles on Boreout

[edit] Further reading

Diagnosis Boreout – How a lack of challenge at work can make you ill. Peter Werder and
Philippe Rothlin, Redline Wirtschaft (Germany), March 2007.
The Living Dead: Switched Off, Zoned Out - The Shocking Truth About Office Life. David
Bolchover, Capstone, September 2005.
City Slackers: Workers of the world you are wasting your time. Steve McKevitt, Cyan Books,
April 2006.

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