Are your employees bored?

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If you're worried that this: Ex-employee sues company for boring him, could happen to you. Then its time to take action; employee engagement is essential to keep staff both productive and motivated.

However, there are always unexpected lulls in the workplace, so just how can you keep your employees interested? Not putting any blocks on your employees' use of the internet could be one option. According to research published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, cyberloafing as they call it is a natural response to boredom.

“My interest started with the idea of workplace boredom. I study work stress, and while much focus is being put on overload, there are many people who experience their work as boring for various reasons,” said study author Shani Pindek of the University of Haifa to the psychology website PysPost.

“The reasons and consequences for this boredom are not well-understood. For example, how bad is it, really, for someone to be bored on their jobs? Are there easy ways to deal with boredom on the job that would negate harmful effects?”

The research focused on over 400 non-instructional university personnel and found that a minimal workload corresponded with boredom and in turn using the internet recreationally at work.

“Cyberloafing is a rather natural response to workplace boredom and it is different from other (more harmful) forms of counterproductive work behaviours,” Pindek added.

Just like these What your employees get up to when they are bored.

“In another study, we did in our lab, we directly examined the benefits from cyberloafing. Under certain stressful situations, engaging in cyberloafing partially buffered the negative effects of workplace stress,” Pindek said. “This upcoming study shows that cyberloafing is a good way of relieving some work stress.”

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