How pointless tasks change employee attitudes

More employees are reporting feeling checked out and turning to the internet to deal with next-day burnout due to pointless work tasks, based on new research.

Hainan University and Charles Darwin University (CDU) conducted a joint study where they monitored over 200 Chinese employees, three times a day over a work week, to discover how illegitimate tasks affected them after work and how they impacted their next-day performance.

These jobs were coined “i-tasks”, or illegitimate tasks, and were found to influence the thoughts and behaviour of workers long after they clock off, the study found.

The lead author of the study, Hainan University Associate Professor Zhao Lijing, said: “i-tasks are duties that fall outside someone’s job role or seem pointless, like asking a nurse to handle maintenance requests or a software engineer to organise office parties.”

“These assignments can leave people feeling undervalued, frustrated, and mentally drained.”

Mental disengagement

The study revealed that after hours, employees felt “unfairness” and “frustration” after having to complete i-tasks, leading to “cyber loafing” the next day – social media use, online shopping and gaming – to mentally disengage.

However, co-author of the paper and CDU senior lecturer in business, Dr Tianyi Long, said: “Frustration can lead to disengagement, but it can also spark innovation.”

“The difference lies in resilience – employees who can adapt and recover quickly from stress are better at turning frustration into problem-solving rather than avoidance,” Long said.

Interestingly, the study found that workers who decided to reflect on problem solving “task crafted”, where they changed their approach to their work in constructive ways.

Opportunities for growth

The research unveiled that while i-tasks should not overtake a worker’s job role and while employers should not delegate unreasonable or meaningless tasks to their employees, there is scope to frame sparing i-tasks as “opportunities for growth”.

“Providing clear communication, autonomy, and resilience-building support can help employees manage challenging workloads more effectively,” Long said.

“By investing in resilience programs and flexible job design, employers can further reduce stress, boost engagement and build a healthier, more productive workplace.”

“In today’s ‘do-more-with-less’ workplaces, resilience isn’t just a personal trait – it’s a performance strategy.”