KEEP THEM BORED
A job that requires very little attention leaves employees with more attention available for engagement initiatives.
Remove novelty, challenge and discretion until the role becomes highly predictable. Maintain enough workload to prevent obvious idleness. When employees report boredom, encourage them to bring more energy to the work.
Reconstructed Handbook series.
Unfortunately, the research…
Claim
Work-related boredom is associated with adverse employee and organizational outcomes and is shaped by job and motivational conditions, though definitions and measures vary across the literature.
Evidence
Longitudinal research links work-related boredom with proximal and distal negative consequences. A 2026 systematic review describes a growing literature connecting job boredom with multiple antecedents and outcomes while noting conceptual and methodological variation.
Strength: Moderate
Sources
- van Hooff & van Hooft (2014) — Consequences of work-related boredom
- Toscanelli et al. (2026) — Job boredom systematic review
The Directive is satire. The research summary is not. Evidence is stated separately and qualified to the underlying literature rather than treated as proof of the joke.