Bored and exhausted? Profiles of boredom and exhaustion at work and the role of job stressors

Abstract

Boredom at work is perceived to result from lacking job stressors as opposed to exhaustion that is a response to excessive job stressors. Employee boredom and exhaustion have thus been considered as antithetical states, and yet they are found to be positively related. It is therefore unclear how boredom and exhaustion manifest among workers. We build on research literature on boredom and challenge - hindrance stressor framework to argue that some employees may be both bored and exhausted depending on distinct job stressors. We employed latent profile analysis and Latent Transition Analysis across two studies to uncover these employee groups and examine if their experiences change over time. In Study 1, we used data from 301 employees to identify four profiles that we labelled “neither bored nor exhausted”, “somewhat bored, somewhat exhausted”, “exhausted and somewhat bored” and “bored and exhausted”. In Study 2, where we used data from 2452 employees at two measurement points across 18 months, we replicated three of the four profiles. Challenge stressors were associated with exhaustion dominant profiles whereas hindrance stressors predicted membership in profiles characterized by both boredom and exhaustion. Profile membership was highly stable over the measurement period. Increases in challenge and hindrance stressors over the measurement period increased the likelihood of transitioning across profiles. This study extends literature on employee well-being by suggesting that boredom and exhaustion can occur in tandem. Further, we show that challenge and hindrance stressors can deteriorate well-being in different ways.