Workplace Watch: Is ‘Boreout’ Killing You?

Browsing over my reading backlog, I stumbled upon this great feature on what’s said to be the “new office disease” - boreout. Forget burnout, Times Online’s Roger Boyes says as boreout has replaced burnout as the workplace virus.

Symptoms are quite similar to burnout. You feel irritable, drained and staring blankly into space. The main difference? The reason why. While burnout victims blame being overworked and underpaid, the opposite reasons are found with boreout victims. Many workers today feel that they are underutilized and under-appreciated.

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.

So what does this mean? We can definitely infer that workplaces today are volatile presenting new challenges for management and human resources. And this creates new dimensions in management. That means that every workload to every employee should be carefully assigned making sure that both match.