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Home » News » It’s so boring – or is it? Examining mindfulness in monotonous
jobs » It’s so boring – or is it? Examining mindfulness in monotonous jobs

IT’S SO BORING – OR IS IT? EXAMINING MINDFULNESS IN MONOTONOUS JOBS

6 Apr 2023

We all get bored at work from time-to-time, but some jobs are more monotonous
than others.

Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, mindfulness has been found to be an
effective way to improve the boredom associated with remote working. So could
boredom during jobs such as working on an assembly line or providing delivery
services be improved with mindfulness practices too?

Prof Jochen Reb at Singapore Management University is part of an international
team of researchers trying to understand how we can improve work-induced
boredom.

Read their original research: http://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12370

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to ResearchPod. Thank you for listening and joining us today.

In this episode we will delve into the research around the role that mindfulness
can have on people’s task performance when they are doing monotonous work.

We all get bored at work from time-to-time, but some jobs are more monotonous
than others. That’s why an international team of researchers have been trying to
understand how we can reduce work-induced boredom for people doing monotonous
jobs, such as working on an assembly line or providing delivery services.

The team tested an idea that mindfulness – a receptive attention to, and
awareness of, what is happening in the present moment – could reduce boredom in
employees doing monotonous work.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have become much more aware of how bored people
can get while remote working. This has led to an increase in research into how
we can deal with boredom caused by remote work. Through this, mindfulness has
been found to be an effective way to reduce the boredom.

Mindfulness originated as a Buddhist practice, but has since become widespread
across different cultures in a secularized form. It concerns focusing attention
on, and becoming aware of, what is happening in the present moment. Attention
can be focused on external stimuli, such as what is going on around you, but
also internal stimuli, such as bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions. There
are differences between individuals’ levels of mindfulness, due to genetic
differences, environmental influences, or personal practice.

The finding that mindfulness reduces boredom in remote working could improve job
performance in white collar job roles within the developed world. Silicon
Valley, for example, is now a hotbed for mindfulness-at-work practices. While
this research into mindfulness at work may be useful for the white-collar
workers in the developed world, it is also important to consider blue-collar
workers in manufacturing, service, and agricultural sectors. Many blue-collar
jobs involve repetitive tasks, and this repetitiveness is considered to be the
defining feature of monotonous jobs. Monotony can cause boredom, and yet
monotonous work environments have received relatively little attention by
researchers, despite the prevalence of this type of work around the world.

What is well-known is that job performance and job attitudes in employees are
negatively affected when carrying out monotonous work. So, it is important to
understand monotonous workplace boredom, and how it can be reduced.

This was the quest an international research team consisting of Professor
Andreas Wihler from the University of Exeter, Professor Ute Huelsheger from
Maastricht University, Professor Jochen Reb from Singapore Management University
and Professor Jochen Menges from the University of Zurich. The team conducted
their research with a hundred and ninety-two employees of a Mexican company
offering simple services in processing, assembling, and manufacturing. Employees
of the company all do the same, highly repetitive tasks and experience the same
monotonous work conditions.

The team tested a theory that individuals with higher levels of mindfulness find
monotonous work subjectively less boring than individuals with lower levels of
mindfulness. By reducing boredom, they predicted employees with higher
mindfulness would perform better. Mindfulness has been previously theorised to
increase work performance by improving attentional qualities, such as stability,
control, and efficiency at work.

However, previous investigations of the relationship between monotonous task
performance and mindfulness have shown contradictory results. And some have
argued that monotonous tasks are best performed using automatic cognitive
processing, or mind-less-ly. While there is a large body of research which shows
mindfulness improves job attitudes, including job satisfaction and turnover
intentions, it is unclear whether these findings can be generalised to attitudes
of employees in monotonous jobs. Thus, the need for further research to better
understand the effect of mindfulness on monotonous task performance.

The international research team collected information from the employees at the
Mexican company at three separate time points. At the first, they collected
demographic information for the employees and used a short questionnaire to
measure their levels of trait mindfulness. At the second timepoint, four weeks
thereafter, they collected information on the employees’ levels of boredom and
attitudes towards work. At the third and final timepoint four months later, they
measured each employee’s job performance, including the number of errors made
over the previous four months. This information was obtained through the HR
department of the company.

The results of the study showed that higher mindfulness was indeed associated
with lower boredom in monotonous work. This supports previous research and
improves understanding of the relationship between objective monotony and
subjective boredom. Although monotony can lead to boredom, the relationship
between monotony and boredom is not properly understood. This research suggests
that mindfulness plays an important role: Mindfulness enables employees to
experience a task as if they are engaging in it for the first time, thus
alleviating the subjective sense of monotony and boredom in the task.

Higher mindfulness was also related to lower quantity of task performance, but
higher quality of task outcome. This mixed picture of how mindfulness relates to
overall task performance in monotonous work provides a new contribution to the
field. This finding suggests that two of the leading theories on the
relationship between mindfulness and task performance may be correct:
Mindfulness increases focus on the task, which may benefit the quality of the
task outcome, but equally the increased awareness that comes with mindfulness
may slow down progress towards the target work goal and therefore decrease the
quantity of the completed task.

The researchers also found that higher mindfulness was associated with better
job satisfaction. This supported previous research exploring this research
question in other types of jobs, for example with high amounts of emotional
labour or dynamic environments. Going further than previous studies, the
research also showed that this relationship could be partly explained by
employee’s level of boredom. Employees with high mindfulness were more satisfied
with their jobs, in part because they felt less bored in their work.

Finally, the research team found that higher mindfulness was associated with a
lower inclination towards leaving their job. These results support and extend
previous findings of an association between mindfulness and job turnover
intentions towards monotonous work conditions. The results may also help
companies adapt their personnel selection processes for improved retention
rates.

This research offers a novel insight into the role of mindfulness in monotonous
job performance, and improves upon previous research by measuring actual job
performance instead of ratings of job performance by employees or supervisors,
which are more subjective and can be biased. It also improves understanding of
boredom at work, which is not well understood but is receiving increasing
research interest.

The study collected a large sample of participants and utilised valid measures,
bolstering the reliability of the results. The authors note that the mindfulness
questionnaire may not comprehensively cover all the different aspects of
mindfulness, and so future research should test whether the results of this
study hold when using a different mindfulness questionnaire. The authors also
note that future research should explore whether the findings replicate in
different cultures – as the current study only included employees from a company
in Mexico.

Other future research directions for this work could include exploring the
efficacy of mindfulness interventions on job performance in monotonous work, and
investigating how the relationship between mindfulness and job performance
changes in the short-term, for example on a day-to-day basis.

This research could have important implications for organisations whose
employees engage in monotonous work. Organisations could use mindfulness
practices to improve employee job satisfaction, reduce boredom, increase work
quality and lower employee turnover. To do this they could offer employees
mindfulness training in the workplace. In addition, employees in monotonous work
could also benefit from the findings of this research by using mindfulness
practices to improve their own job satisfaction and reduce levels of boredom.

The researchers note, however, that while the findings of this research can be
used to improve outcomes for employees and employers, they should not be used in
unethical ways. For example, the findings of this research should not be used to
make employees who are in monotonous jobs work harder or make employees more
compliant with non-ethical procedures. The findings of the research should also
not be used as a way to avoid improving monotonous working conditions.

Professor Jochen Reb says that most mindfulness studies have focused on
white-collar employees, even as many workers around the globe work in
blue-collar jobs under often monotonous conditions. He adds that through their
encouraging findings, they hope to stimulate more research on how mindfulness
may be helpful in blue-collar work, reducing boredom and increasing the quality
of work and employee well-being.

That’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to
ResearchPod for more detailed breakdowns of the latest academic research. See
you next time!

Also published on:
https://researchpod.org/informatics-technology/its-so-boring-or-is-it-examining-mindfulness-in-monotonous-jobs

Podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple iTunes, Google Podcasts, and many
more (please use search term “ResearchPod”).

Last updated on 06 Apr 2023 .

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research.smu.edu.sg Open in urlscan Pro
45.64.67.14 Public Scan

Form analysis
3 forms found in the DOM