Slowly but surely, the reality of office life is starting to emerge. Far from
everyone being stressed out and overworked, as has been the received wisdom
for some time, a significant segment of the workforce is actually suffering
from underwork, lack of challenge and outright boredom. As the truth drips
out, two questions arise. Why has it taken so long to see the light of day,
and why is it coming out now?
In Germany, a country known for its accent on business efficiency, a new
management book is causing waves. Diagnosis Boreout, by Philippe Rothlin and
Peter Werder, concludes from survey evidence that around 15 per cent of
office staff do extremely little. This approximately tallies with an
extensive international Gallup survey published in 2004 showing that one in
five workers is “actively disengaged”, accomplishing next to nothing and
undermining the efforts of others.
It would be easy to focus exclusively on that 15 per cent, have a little
chuckle about life’s lazy slackers, vow to root them out, and console
ourselves that we have 85 per cent, thank the Lord, who are committed and
hard-working. It would be lovely if it worked like that, but it doesn’t.
According to Gallup, three in five of us are “not engaged” – dutifully turning
up to our place of work but lacking any energy or enthusiasm. If 15 per cent
do nothing, then an additional 60 per cent probably do a lot less than they
like to let on.
Damning statistics on non-work-related internet use and personal e-mail use
bear this out. The next time you meet somebody who huffs and puffs and
drones on about how busy they are at work, the chances are that person is an
outright liar.
So much for the cutting-edge, pressure-cooker, streamlined organisations of
corporate mythology. The various constituencies who have combined to
suppress the truth are guilty of nothing less than retarding the development
of the capitalist world. As any amateur psychologist knows, it is only by
confronting the reality that you can hope to progress, no matter how
uncomfortable that reality is.
These constituencies are many and varied, and have all had a vested interest
in preserving The Big Lie. First we have the leaders at the top of large
organisations. They have little incentive to allow the reality of often
shambolic inefficiency out of the bag. It damages the brand, and detracts
from their own painstakingly constructed image as a prudent captain running
a tight ship. Anyway, no matter how gifted they are, no chief executive can
possibly have the foggiest notion what is going on at the grass roots of a
company with tens of thousands of employees worldwide.
Their legion of middle managers is certainly not going to knock on the
boardroom door bringing news of pervasive inactivity and ennui. For a start,
that would reflect badly on them, as they are nominally responsible for
people management. But despite this formal role, they are often still judged
and remunerated for their own individual performance, not for that of their
team. Too much effort spent trying to organise and motivate their charges
therefore serves little purpose.
Then we have the masses of bored employees themselves. There is nothing in it
for them to publicise the truth. They don’t want to be sacked for not
contributing. And they have in the past generally sought to convey, even to
their friends and family, a perception of themselves as indispensable and
go-getting, not apathetic and do-nothing.
Outside the organisation, others happily avert their eyes from the troublesome
truth. Political prejudice is a major culprit. The Right preoccupies itself
with waste in the public sector, while maintaining a naively idealised
vision of an ultra-competitive, super-efficient private sector. The Left was
delighted with the narrative that emphasised overwork, affirming their
worldview of ruthless capitalists exploiting the downtrodden workers.
The print and broadcast media operate in a highly competitive environment and
are subject to persistently tight deadlines. Most of their journalists have
little or no experience of working in industries where performance is often
much less measurable and where the everyday tasks are more drawn-out and
less pressurised. Supported by the plentiful rent-a-quote workplace stress
specialists supplied by academia and firms of organisational psychologists,
they are naturally more attracted to stories of excessive workload than to
tales of millions of workers idling away the day getting paid doing nothing.
Next come the management consultancies. It is not in their interests to pose
fundamental questions about how companies are organised or led, because they
are in thrall to the senior managers who pay them. That is not to say that
all consultants tell their clients only what they want to hear, but simply
to note that the powerful temptation to do so is always there. At the very
least, you have to ask this question: why has the large number of
high-powered consultancies that have been in business for decades not had
more of an effect on the way companies manage their staff?
Business schools, as academic institutions, have a responsibility to pursue
the truth. But as Charles Handy, the eminent management writer, put it last
year: “They don’t challenge or speculate, they are not places of great
inquiry . . . they are antiintellectual.” Like the management consultancies,
they are preoccupied with avoiding offence to their corporate clients, thus
serving to uphold a status quo that requires radical change.
The good news is that all these participants in the denial are up against a
powerful Zeitgeist. Whereas the 1980s was a time when people sought to
emphasise their own individual status, either through owning fast cars or
designer clothes, or by informing everyone how madly busy they were, now
honesty and openness are in fashion. The proliferation of personal blogging,
life coaches and therapists are all testaments to this changing mood. The
truth will hurt countless sensitivities, but the ridiculous farce of
millions travelling hours on a train every day to do nothing may be finally
coming to an end.
David Bolchover is the author of The Living Dead: Switched Off, Zoned Out –
the Shocking Truth about Office Life
I do not think that bore out applies to office work only. I am living prooth of boreout occuring in the minds some retail workers. I work at a checkout at Asda. Every month we are assessed by a mystery shopper. Who assesses us on whether or not we say hello, apologies for the delay, would you like a hand packing. Imagine saying these or similar things again and again for many hours. The conversation with many customers is always small talk. The tasks which my job involves does not challenge my brain. I get bored, I make mistakes because I am not thinking. I am going mad. I want to put my head in a mixer, because my brain is not needed. I am very studious. I can talk about geography, history, science, law. All the small talk and the same actions linked with the mentally unchallenging tasks has lead to me being on anti-depressants. I cannot all of a sudden leave my checkout. without the permission of a supervisor. My health and safety is of far less importance than serving a customers.
Nicole Horton, Gothambatman, UK
It's been going on for years now, it's all part of the game of life,
Ducardo, Devor, UK
I thought your comment about management consultants was particularly insightful. I recall a number of years ago the company I was then working for employed a well known consultancy firm to review operations. As a middle manager I was run of my feet providing information and masses of statistics. Expecting a paradigm shift as an outcome I was disappointed over the following weeks and months to find nothing changed. Indeed performance - in my view - worsened. Moreover outside of top management the findings of the consultants were never revealed to any of the working groups.
Instead of revealing the truth management all to often conceals it and it often those that do the concealing (some may argue the most politically attuned) that are the survivors.
Mike , Ipswich , UK
The reality is that the most unproductive days in terms of work are when we have "good ideas" from senior executives who require new forms of statistical collection based on data they are already in possession of. Thus when we have to spend a long time devising means by which statistics can be collected automatically, only for them to ask for changes without realising the difficulty that can be encountered acceding to their wishes. The best managers are able to devise their own methods and then use them to surprise middle managers by their knowledge of what is going on. Perhaps that is where the problem is, there are people at lower levels who know what is going on and middle managers who know little - this leaves top management in the position of relying on inaccurate data and making decisions based on bad information. People can often manage themselves.
Martin Wright, Birmingham, England
A couple of comments:
(1) People work a lot harder when they are incentivised to do so and when they feel like what they are doing is worthwhile on a general level and profitable on a personal level; and
(2) If people are not working hard it is either because they are lazy/distracted/disengaged, in which case get rid of them and get someone else who isn't, or there isn't enough to do, in which case make that position redundant.
The remedy for addressing both these scenarios rests with the employer.
If people are travelling hours every day to do jobs that add little or no value to a business, it surely isn't the fault of those people. It is the fault of the employer.
James, England,
How about exploring the other side of the coin? Those that are overworked, performance-measured 97 ways 'til Sunday and driven to a nervous breakdown in a toxic workplace? A year after I quit my job like that I am still barely able to function in a mindless job earning a third of the salary.
Sue, San Antonio, Texas USA
Better get back to work now ... or not..
Tarun, Essex, UK
The reality is that in the case of manual work you can probably work efficiently for 8-10 hours a day (depending on the load and your stamina) but jobs that require a focused mind cannot be performed for more than 3-5 hours a day. Simple as that. Afterwards your brains turns off and you end up looking at a screen without doing anything. Unless you are a lucky person with a job that encompass diverse tasks so you can switch off and do something completely different then you are bound to end up reading email and surf the net.
Basil, Cambridge,
When my partner read this he passed it straight to me because it sums up my working life completely. Just over 18 months ago I started a job that was supposed to be responsible and challenging. It turns out I am little more than a general office goafer because my boss cannot release control. I have changed from a person who loved going into work to one who feels depressed and sick at the thought of walking through the door to the office. I spend time at work on the internet , reading the news, emailing friends etc. I tried to tell my boss that I wasn't beind stimulated enough on more than one occasion and her response was to give me menial tasks. I have given up telling her I'm bored as I don't want to be given any more rubbish. Instead I bide my time until I find something better.
As for time to go to the doctors, referred to by another reader. We can't go in working hours because in spite of telling our bosses we don't have enough work to do, they still think we need to be there!
Helen Smith, Swindon, Wiltshire
The direct cause of "The office layabout" is the companies and corporate structures that we have today.
Any employee that has ever landed a "dream" job, and gone the extra mile for a company they believed in, only to be laid off at the first sign of a drop in share price, will never have the same enthusiasm for lining someone else's pockets a second time. And given that six years ago we saw one of the biggest kicks in the economy's teeth that it has ever had, and lots of keen, enthusiastic, effective employees lost their jobs, it is no surprise that there is a bit of apathy in the workplace.
The problem is that the MDs and HR managers in the bigger companies are not qualified to know whether or not an employee actually cares about their employer – their MBA didn't cover that.
You get out of an employee what you put in, the same as any other relationship. Most companies don't put anything into their employees and so deserve to get the same back.
You are just a number, employee xxx.
Ben Lefroy, Somerton, Somerset
This is absolutely right. I spent 26 years in the City and the amount of actual work I did in that time could have been compressed into 6-12 months. I often looked around at my colleagues reading the FT shuffling through brokers' circulars discussing where to have lunch and wonder what sort of mad world this was
More power to Mr. Bolchover's elbow. \if he wishes he may contac me for a coalface expose.
Rassendyll, Cambridge, UK
i didn't have time to do more than skim read the first paragraph of the article whilst eating a sandwich I will now return to work and wont raise my head until 5 I will then return home knackered. It may be true of office workers on the continent but my experience is that office workers in this country mainly work very hard with less time off than our European counterparts. Burnout is more of a concern for me than boredom.
stephen johnson, newcastle,
Well done to G Brown for being so honest.
I was bored at School and University, I was bored during my postgrad. I am now very bored at work and I work for myself and am reasonably successful.
if you are reasonably bright and can work fast when you need to you can get your work done in 2 hours. The other six is spent on BBC news online, and I cannot even balme the boss.
I think we need more honesty.
Steve, Gloucester,
Insightful when it comes to office life....
Other lines-of-work can be a very different story - and when you do work a solid 40 real hours week, the weekend is a period of hibernation.
So for example, when you next eat in a restaurant, be considerate and generous when tipping... the waitress/ waiter may have already been running in circles for 8 hours solid, catering to the whims of us overworked office cattle.
Ruse, London, UK
From personal experience there are times when I am run off my feet trying to meet a deadline. However, once the deadline has been met it is back to normal routine of spending most of my time reading work-related emails, checking the news and chatting with colleagues.
David, Sheffield, UK
To Barry - Wallington, it's not that we're busy working, we're busy being in the office for seven hours a day, working while we're there is another matter...
Jo, London, England
In an office where you have two hours of work a day, if you genuinely spend two hours doing it you will be bullied by your fellow-staff who fear that they will have to work normally too and forced out of work by managers who fear a cut in their empires.
Jo Bruno, London,
So you have time to read this article and my comment underneath? Says it all, doesn't it...?
Paul W, Southampton,
Interesting - particularly on the same day as you report that the government thinks we need more accessible GPs' surgeries because we're all so busy working.
Barry, Wallington, UK
David, Well said, well spoken and you have brought out the naked truth about the office culture. One such mantra which is followed very dilligently in all offices, public departments and utility work stations is " Look busy , do nothing". It is the art of doing nothing yet been off the radar of your immediate boss , as a busy bee who is hard pressed and over loaded.It pays to be like a working drone yet remaining layabout in your cloistered cubicle with rags of sheets, time schedulers and scattered reports lying around in a messy, dishevelled state. It is a proven fact that work fatigue, burnout and stress factor is mainly due to mismanagement and underworked situation. When you are working hard, focussed and accepting challanges, the positive secretions and endopherines in the body keep revving up our spirits.The underperformers are best shamsters to talk about being fagged out, frazzled and being mentally tired due to work drudgeries.I read a book, "Art of being lazy",a genuine work.
sandy, New Delhi, India
This article (and the one on Saturday) so accurately describes my hellish life working in a publishing company in Surrey for three years that it made me want to weep. Why are management so inept that they cannot see their staff are dying of boredom, and why won't they listen when you ask for more work?
My life changed for the better when due to its own incompetence the company got into trouble and made me redundant. I went freelance and now every day is a worthwhile challenge.
Maybe this country needs a recession.
Chris N, Lewes,
The German General Staff [the story goes] used to divide army officers into four categories: the clever and lazy, the clever and hard-working, the stupid and lazy and the stupid and hard-working. The best Generals, the Germans found, came from the clever and lazy; the best staff officers emerged from the clever and hard-working; the stupid and lazy could be made useful as regimental officers; but the stupid and hard-working were a menace, to be disposed of as soon as possible
Benjamin, Ridgewell, UK
Totally agree. I joked with a friend this weekend: "I don't know what I used to do at work before the internet - work, probably".
Nobby, London,
Two points: the underperforming are themselves usually concentrated in management in my experience. This is intuitively reasonable - with less time taken up by productive work, they have more to devote to climbing the greasy pole. So they are unlikely to report a situation in which they play a large part.
Second, there was a marvellous (serious) report on the Ignobel site recently to the effect that stupid people who think they're "doin' a great job" do so because they are too stupid to recognise expertise, or even competence, and cannot meaningfully compare their performance to that of experts. One suspects idle people who think they're working hard also are not consciously lying, they simply have never worked as if their livelihoods depended on it, so don't know what it actually feels like.
Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK
"At the very least, you have to ask this question: why has the large number of high-powered consultancies that have been in business for decades not had more of an effect on the way companies manage their staff? "
A good question indeed. Perhaps it is because the consultants are less concerned about the politics of work and more concerned about the work of work.
Mary Knight, Pittsburgh, PA
I am often congratulated for the hard work that I do but if I am honest, I probably do about 10 hours a week of work. I have been aware of this ever since I left school, where I was really obliged to work hard.
I have often wondered what makes the civilized world go round. I observe busy bodies charging around the office making a lot of noise, I see family life being ignored as neurotic career women pretend to make themselves much more useful at work and yet no one seems produces anything of much use.
How long has this been going on and how come we always get paid at the end of the month?
G Brown, London, UK