Business Monitor Boredom is a part of work


Once they’ve been working for a number of years most people have had a boring job, one that they leave pretty rapidly. Interestingly, it turns out that an old adage of employment: ‘people quit a boss not a job’ is in fact wrong. Marketing expert, Paul Clapham, reports.


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riting in the Harvard Business Review, Lori Goler, head of people at Facebook (where do they get these titles?) said that employees leave when their job is not enjoyable, or their career is stagnant or their strengths are underused. That at least is what they told her and we should not forget that people lie through their back teeth when explaining why theyʼre leaving.


Boredom is a part of work. Even sexy, glamorous jobs have their longueurs. 87% of people experience boredom at work, according to Psychology Today. Read any of John Le Carreʼs novels and it is clear that spying, a pretty glamorous calling if you want, has its boring bits. Le Carre is an ex-spy, remember. Actors and rock stars spend a lot more time practising the same thing over and over rather than actually performing. This matters because employees can often misinterpret boredom as general dissatisfaction with a job and leave, which is bad for both the employee and the employer alike. Itʼs far better to have a culture that says ʻhow can we make your job better for youʼ. Money and perks donʼt come into it, incidentally.


Dull on the face of it


Jobs that appear dull on the face of it can hold endless interest for some people. I recall having some 16 sheet posters printed many moons ago, long before short run digital print was even a glimmer in a printerʼs eye. The printers employed a guy to touch in one of the four process colours where the machine had missed.


That would have had me and, I suspect, most people climbing the walls and screaming by lunchtime on the first day. He by contrast was really proud of his job: to him, it was in a creative field, it required precision and attention to detail and was decently paid.


In the same vein, I used to work in the marketing department of a City insurance company where I had to mix with actuaries regularly. These are the people who assess risk for all forms of insurance. When your renewal notice shows a big hike, spit in the general direction of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in Holborn.


They are not exciting people, not even | 20 | June 2019


interesting. How could they be when they spend 37 hours a week studying statistics on computer spreadsheets? Consider, too, that those statistics address, inter alia, such lively subjects as mortality, morbidity and personal injury. They are nearly all maths graduates so I find the dullness odd because all the maths students I recall from university were good fun.


The dignity of labour. A boring job puts money in your bank each month, it gives you self-respect. It enables you to pay your way, hold your head up, buy your round. Men in particular need those things to justify themselves. Until relatively recently the only reasons for working were to put food on the table, pay the mortgage/rent and clothe the family. Now itʼs about job satisfaction – nice if you can get it but not essential.


A means to an end Work is a means to an end, not the other way around. Silicon Valley and its billion dollar unicorns have led to people thinking that chasing the big bucks is all life is about. Itʼs not and it certainly isnʼt what happiness is about for most people. Elon Musk notably said: “Nobody changed the world on 40 hours a week.” True. It didnʼt take that long. Lennon and


McCartney and Jagger and Richards could lay claim to achieving that change and they did it when they werenʼt working.


Consider too the detectorists who regularly discover big bucks, hoards of gold, silver and precious gems or those who pan for precious metals in Welsh rivers. Then there are the artists and writers who turn a passion into a million. All of this is happening on a daily basis and the people involved donʼt call it work because itʼs an enthusiasm. Encourage those enthusiasms in staff. They may fit with current or prospective clients. They too probably think that their jobs are boring at least part of the time. So put your fishing enthusiast next to the client who loves the river bank, invite the cricketer to play in your Sunday league team, find space for your client/staff heavy metal band to practise. As a final point some people are apparently naturally inclined to be bored. More than that and rather worryingly a rising generation of children are not learning how to entertain themselves. This it is suggested is because of excessive screen time from an early age and hence constant stimulation by games, TV and Facebook so they never have to do that themselves.


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