Why A Boring Job Can be a Dangerous Job

Why A Boring Job is Dangerous

July is National Anti-Boredom Month, a month dedicated to fighting against the effects of boredom, founded by Alan Caruba as a response to the gap in activity after July 4th. In the workplace, too, boredom is a looming villain to contend with. Long accepted as normal, the tedium of a “boring job” can become dangerous when applied to employee health and high-risk environments.

Boredom, according to Forbes, is an emotional state characterized by feeling under stimulated, unfocused, and restless, yet lacking the desire to engage. In a workplace where an employee’s job is to monitor screens or displays for hours on end, boredom is a given component of their daily life.

While emotional states like burnout, or fatigue caused by overwork, receive a lot of attention in workplace mental health circles, the opposite effect, bore-out, is often overlooked. Many of the symptoms are similar to burnout, but are caused by a loss of workplace purpose rather than overwork.

According to Business and Management Studies’ article, “The Effects of Boreout on Stress, Depression and Anxiety In The Workplace,” bore-out consists of three basic factors, “a crisis of growth, a crisis of meaning at work, and job boredom.” It can lead to anxiety, depression, stress, and insomnia; all of which can cause fatigue and distraction in the workplace. Boredom is also the number one reported reason that people leave their jobs, leading to higher turnover in boring work positions.

Boredom in the Safety Field

Boredom can become especially dangerous in fields that deal with many dangerous components and safeguards. This can include jobs where it is important to monitor a screen or display for changes, jobs with late night shifts, or even detail-oriented and difficult jobs that have been completed successfully enough times to lead to complacency.

The infamous Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, for example, was in part caused by the monotony and complacency tied to a job that no one believed could go wrong, as it had been done many times with ease in the past. The danger of violating safeguards had faded into the vast expanse of boredom, leading to environmental disaster and the loss of millions of dollars in lawsuits.

How to Avoid A Boring Job

Boredom is one of the many symptoms we investigate in the TapRooT® RCA process to improve human performance. Here are a few ideas we include in the Corrective Action Helper® Guide:

• Job Sharing: Employers can employ shorter shifts or a rotating schedule to ensure fresh eyes are on the displays.
• Automated Monitoring: Removing or distancing the human from the problem is always a top tier (albeit expensive) solution. Automating your monitoring system to alert the necessary employee while they do other, more engaging tasks could help to remove the necessity of a boring job altogether.
• Increased Frequency or Length of Breaks: Breaks make a big difference in preventing fatigue in the workplace. Giving employees adequate time to do something restful that they enjoy can improve their monitoring alertness.

In the increased research on solutions to the “bore-out” problem, a few additional ideas have begun to be adopted by major companies like Google, focused especially on adding passion to the workplace. “Job crafting,” for example, refers to when an employee is able to redesign their job to align with their passions and interests, while still ensuring the essential tasks of the job are performed. Similarly, many companies find it useful to set aside time on the clock for the part of the job the employee is most passionate about, allowing them to remember and enjoy the reasons why they chose this job in the first place.

Most importantly of all, supervisors should ask their team for ideas on how to decrease boredom in their workplace. They know the job and they know their own minds, and therefore have more insight on what they can and cannot do than someone could have via outside research alone. Additionally, the knowledge that they helped to design their own workplace standards and procedures can help to increase the feeling of passion and connection to the workplace that is necessary to reduce bore-out.

Rethinking Human Performance

To learn more about how to manage the risks associated with boredom, look into our Human Performance Track at the 2025 TapRooT® Summit, where you can find sessions on Fatigue Risk Management, and many of the other workplace issues associated with human performance.

Özsungur, F., The Effects Of Boreout On Stress, Depression And Anxiety In The
Workplace, BMIJ, (2020), 8(2): 1391-1423 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15295/bmij.v8i2.1460