by yourself glazing over at work your
mind wandering you're kind of in a
daydream maybe you're just not
interested in what you're doing maybe
you're not challenged maybe you're not
motivated turns out Americans admit they
are bored at work ten and a half hours a
week I mean that's a quart more than a
quarter of the work time figuring out a
40-hour workweek
that equals 268 days a year forty
percent said they're likely to quit
their job if they're bored there are
many reasons why people say they're
bored but 39 percent of managers say
employees have too much to do which kind
of seems counterintuitive right you've
got too much to do how can you be bored
let's talk about it with Kevin Trainor
with Robert Half good to have you here
you know in a survey that we got ahold
of it seems like people just don't feel
challenged and when they're not
challenged they get that glazed-over
right right so you know it's important
from a management standpoint to
communicate well with your employees and
have an open dialogue about what their
workload is is it enough to keep them
active and busy throughout the day but
efficiency levels are varied from one
employee to the next and like we were
talking about a minute ago some may work
through tasks a little bit faster than
others so as a manager or a business
owner it's your responsibility to make
sure you know kind of what's pushing
your people and keeping them engaged
throughout the day and I find this hard
to believe 23% said they they don't
think they have enough work to do we
live in an age where you've got to
multitask and you know our bosses just
keep throwing more at us right yeah and
that may just be some folks maybe
avoiding some work at times but you know
one of the suggestions that we get and
the result of this survey is if you feel
like you don't have enough on your plate
that's again that's a conversation that
you should be having with your manager
or your supervisor to say you know I'm
working through things maybe faster than
you expect for me what else can I be
doing talk to colleagues who are maybe
are overwhelmed and don't have the time
to get all of their work done through
the day and see how you can help them
out so if you're a manager what are some
clues that you've got to help go ahead
and change the color yeah so if you're
seeing a lot of employees with that kind
of glazed look like you said where
they're just not engaged or you feel
like the productivity levels aren't
quite where they're you'd like them to
be from a management standpoint open
lines of communication meet with your
people regularly start infusing some you
know enjoyable things to the day maybe a
happy hour or a lunch and stuff that is
gonna keep people interested in
remaining with you
organization team building exactly yes
do you think another problem is that
people don't feel appreciated because
you know the reality is managers their
bottom line oriented they're worried
about the budgets and they're not
necessarily people yeah yeah it could be
part of the problem I think when we talk
about an appreciation factor for
employees and whether or not they're
feeling like that or not we're coming
out of an economy where companies were
running very very lean for several years
and they were pushing a lot of stuff
down and and it was overloading people
without necessarily having that means to
hire to bring in additional help
so hopefully companies are seeing a
recovery now and they're starting to
invest more in hiring more individuals
and bring in the help that's needed so
that employees are feeling a little less
stretched a little bit more appreciated
and are getting the return from that and
here's the other thing you got to take
the bull by the horns because you can
often help yourself yeah yeah 100% so
there are some things that we suggest
doing that may help alleviate some of
this boredom at work sometimes it's
getting engaged in a mentoring program
within the organization taking classes
or courses for certifications that may
help you from a professional development
standpoint a lot of different ways that
you can help kind of advance your career
mm-hmm and if you basically go to the
bus you don't want to say on board right
what you want to say look you know I
feel like I want to grow with the
company and take on new challenges is
that a positive way to approach yeah
absolutely use specific examples so you
know I was given tasks a B and C or this
type of project that was supposed to
take X amount of time and I completed it
maybe faster than expected
and here's why because I'm doing a good
job and I know my job and I know what
I'm doing here so maybe I'm ready to
start taking on some more what can you
offer me to help me develop and
contribute to the organization and
that'll serve you well because we do
live in an environment today where
companies go I don't care what you did
in the past tell me what you're gonna do
for me tomorrow right what have you done
for me lately kind of a thing right so
yeah everybody's looking at how are we
improving how are we continuing develop
and stay competitive so those are all
things that you know they're looking at
their employees to help contribute to
yeah bye sir thank you very much so