Boredom can affect even the most studious of workers, and worrying new statistics from CV-Library, the UK’s leading independent job board, reveal that boredom afflicts nearly half of UK workers (44.9 per cent) and 54 per cent admit that they have looked for a new job as a result of a dull work life.
The survey, which asked 1,200 professionals about boredom at work, finds that one in five (19.5 per cent) UK workers admitted to feeling bored on a weekly basis, with a further 23.7 per cent claiming that they feel this way about their work every day. Furthermore, only 19.3 per cent of workers stated that they never felt bored in their work life.
When asked why they felt this way, respondents cited the following as the top reasons:
- I do the same thing every day – 26.6 per cent
- I dislike my job – 21.8 per cent
- My daily tasks are tedious – 16.6 per cent
- There’s little for me to do – 14.3 per cent
- I work alone – 8.3 per cent
Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library, comments, ‘It is very disappointing to see boredom getting the best of the UK’s workers. With so much of our adult lives spent in work, ensuring that you get passion and enjoyment from your career is of paramount importance. Prolonged boredom in a job can lead, very quickly, to burnout, low productivity and inevitably a high turnover of staff for businesses, so it’s extremely important that each and every employee in a company feels engaged in their day-to-day work.’
When asked how they maintain productivity at work during these periods of boredom, 28.8 per cent of UK workers citied that they would prioritise their workload in a bid to re-engage with the work at hand.
Following this, 15 per cent would set deadlines for themselves, with a further 12.8 per cent opting to listen to music in an attempt to ward off the onset of boredom.
Biggins continues, ‘While it is good that UK workers have coping mechanisms in place to ensure that their productivity levels don’t decline, there is clearly a worrying trend of boredom in the workplace. It is up to employers to identify disengaged workers and find ways of re-injecting purpose and interest into their job role, or risk a high turnover of staff as a result.
‘In some cases, it may be that workers are simply not in the correct job, and they should take these feelings of boredom as a sign that they need to start searching for a new job that they are passionate about.’
Further reading on boredom at work
