Boredom Can Easily Morph Into Unproductive Employees
Boredom at work is common but it has the potential to allow employees to become unproductive. For some employees, part of their motivation is external and tied to their activities at work. But when work is not fun, stimulating, or interesting, productivity can suffer. While the reality is that in some cases the nature of the work doesn’t lend itself to getting excited about, work doesn’t have to be boring and you don’t have to lose productivity from your employees. In a Robert Half blog, it states that “Employees are bored 10.5 hours of the week.” It is important to keep in mind that all boredom cannot be eliminated but it surely can be reduced from this high number.
In “The Best Ways To Handle Boredom At Work” Rachel Montanez states “It’s a common feeling in the workplace, and it can be defined as a lack of interest or difficulty concentrating. Boredom most often occurs with mid-career professionals, individuals that are underemployed (their skill set is at a higher level than the job role) or those that have recently had a significant shift in work and life values; like new parents.”
The Dreaded Meeting And Brainstorming Sessions
No matter what your company calls them, meetings and brainstorming sessions are a routine requirement. The problem is that they can often be unproductive. When given anonymity, many employees will say these meetings are a waste of time because they aren’t made to feel comfortable expressing ideas or presenting problems that need to be addressed. However, by turning gatherings such as meetings and brainstorming sessions into more of a game, you can simultaneously relax and energize employees while getting important feedback, ideas and answers to a variety of problems facing the company allowing everyone to benefit.
Productive Fun
One option is creating a Q & A session in the form of a game show. Employees can use Game Show Buzzer to buzz in with their answers and prizes can be anything from an extra break to free lunch or perhaps an extra paid day off. It is common for even the shyest and introverted employees to have very good ideas that can either save your company money or bring in significant additional revenues. Most will happily join in these fun and productive games that can benefit not only the company but them as well. Don’t let good ideas get away from your company! Engage your employees in productive fun activities designed to exchange ideas and opinions.
Cross Training Boosts Engagement
Another way to banish boredom at work is to add value to each employee by getting them to learn new skills or tasks at work. It engages them in a way that is different from their regular position and gives them insight as to why some routines are being done. Your company benefits by having more than one person experienced in that position and able to switch tasks when needed. Further, feedback from that employee with the experience in more than one task or job can be given to you to help your process, save money and add revenues.
Suggestion Boxes With Rewards
There are many bored employees who want to contribute but just don’t know how give them the opportunity to do so with anonymous suggestion boxes. Take care to place your anonymous suggestion boxes in an area where it is not easy to see who is leaving the suggestions. To go one step further and ensure that employees know their suggestions have been heard, you can read the anonymous suggestions at a company meeting and state whether the company will be moving forward on the suggestion or not and simply say thank you for the anonymous suggestion. Some companies get true gems that they can expand upon and save or earn major amounts of money with while allowing those who are afraid or too shy to speak up a way to do it anonymously and see that their ideas are being put into action. What could be more exciting?
Boredom at work can turn into a lack of productivity and for this reason, it is important to keep your employees from getting bored at work. Boredom can cost your company in a variety of ways such as missed deadlines, costly errors, tardy or absent employees, etc. Productivity is the opposite as far it affects your company. Productivity boosts revenues and morale. When you have even one bored employee, you will want to get them to be engaged and productive to ensure their negative mindset doesn’t spread. Increasing productivity among your employees is easy when you use a variety of methods to do so. The key to keeping employees away from boredom is to implement a variety of methods to engage them in their work.
