Financial Institutions and boredom

MissTiny

Hi folks, I am curious to see if others have had an experience like mine.

I have been working in various financial institutions in Dublin for the last 5 years.
The most recurrent problem and usually my reason for resigning always comes down to boredom. I don’t mean boredom with the work I am doing, it is a complete lack of work to do. With the working day typically starting at 9am, I most commonly run out of things to do by 10/11am. This leaves me with about 5 hours of mind numbing, spirit breaking boredom daily.

I am starting to think I am cursed as this problem has followed me through several job changes. I realise that being new in a position involves some patience as there is only so much you can do when you are new. However in some cases the boredom has only become a problem a year or more into the role. I’ve had conversations with managers about this over the years but aside from a sympathetic look there is usually nothing they can do to create new work to keep me occupied.

I am losing my mind with boredom. If one more person says “but you’re getting paid to do nothing, jackpot!!” I will throw myself out the window. I have resorted to emailing myself entire news articles in the evening to read in work the next day so as to avoid being seen dossing on the internet all day. I find myself smoking heavily just as a reason to be away from my desk.

When I try to explain this to people they are perplexed since financial services have a reputation for over-working their staff.
What am I doing wrong? Starting to think a career change might be my only option but I don’t want to throw away 5 years of experience and qualifications.

Anyone any similar experiences?

AtomicHorror

I don't work in your area, but I've experienced the new start thing where they don't know what to do with you.

In office based work there's almost always backlogs of tedious work that have been left sitting for ages. Filing, simple processing, that kind of thing. Have you tried asking other teams or projects if they need help? Shows good initiative when you're a new start. Makes you lots of allies, gives you a better view of the business and areas you could move into. Is this something that could work for you?

For myself, we had a very good digital training system- I started doing additional training courses.

seamus

Specifically what kind of work do you do in financial institutions?

Client-facing staff in financial services tend to be out-the-door busy and constantly working overtime.

Support & Admin staff for these companies, IT in particular, tend to have a lot of free time in their days because they're only needed for irregular spurts of work.

These companies tend to be slow to change things around, so by the end of the first year you know 99% of what's going on with your role, and the pace of change is so glacial that you're rarely troubled with new things to learn.

The companies kind of know this, but they like continuity in their support staff - people who can fix a problem today. So they would rather a bunch of people sitting around bored half the day than to outsource it to a company with a high turnover of staff who aren't intimately familiar with internal processes.

Have you ever noticed how many people in these companies seem to have been working there for decades, not just years? I've been there. I worked in one for a long time. The people are great, the atmosphere is great, the compensation is...OK, just enough to make you hang on. But the boredom can become too much, especially if the "outside world" in your specific niche is moving on and doing new things and you're not getting to work with them.

MissTiny

Thank you both so much for responding.

Unfortunately, access to systems becomes a problem when working across teams. I have inquired about cross-training in every institution but while I am praised for suggesting a solution to the problem, this solution usually leads to more problems (e.g. A busy team are too busy to provide someone to do some training or there is a problem with IT that I cannot have access to multiple processes for security reasons)

I also worry about broadcasting to the entire office that I am idle and in desperate need of work to do in case it reflects poorly on my manager.

It is entirely Admin work I am doing. I would be willing to scrub floors if it meant I had a full working day.

Stonedpilot

MissTiny wrote: »

Hi folks, I am curious to see if others have had an experience like mine.

I have been working in various financial institutions in Dublin for the last 5 years.
The most recurrent problem and usually my reason for resigning always comes down to boredom. I don’t mean boredom with the work I am doing, it is a complete lack of work to do. With the working day typically starting at 9am, I most commonly run out of things to do by 10/11am. This leaves me with about 5 hours of mind numbing, spirit breaking boredom daily.

I am starting to think I am cursed as this problem has followed me through several job changes. I realise that being new in a position involves some patience as there is only so much you can do when you are new. However in some cases the boredom has only become a problem a year or more into the role. I’ve had conversations with managers about this over the years but aside from a sympathetic look there is usually nothing they can do to create new work to keep me occupied.

I am losing my mind with boredom. If one more person says “but you’re getting paid to do nothing, jackpot!!” I will throw myself out the window. I have resorted to emailing myself entire news articles in the evening to read in work the next day so as to avoid being seen dossing on the internet all day. I find myself smoking heavily just as a reason to be away from my desk.

When I try to explain this to people they are perplexed since financial services have a reputation for over-working their staff.
What am I doing wrong? Starting to think a career change might be my only option but I don’t want to throw away 5 years of experience and qualifications.

Anyone any similar experiences?

Worled for a major bank (most backstabbing culture ever by the way) and found it very boring. I read books, lots of bools. Got in trouble with HR for this. Cant win. Boredom can very easily become depression. Be careful. Walk from it if necessary.

MissTiny

I’ve suffered with depression for as long as I can remember but it has been completely under control since my teenage years.
That is, until I get home after a day spent rotting at a desk with nothing to do.

The truly annoying thing is that I desperately want to work and contribute. In other roles over the years, I was the member of staff who worked through lunches, stayed late and generally went the extra mile for colleagues/customers. I find it so fulfilling to be useful and helpful to the people around me even if it just means making someone a cup of tea when they don’t have the time. Nothing gives me greater joy in life then feeling like a valuable member of the team and contributing to the positive reputation of the company I work for.
It would make no difference whatsoever if I didn’t turn up for work tomorrow and that is the most demoralising feeling I can imagine.

seamus

It sounds like you know what you need to do, but you have the fear holding you back

You probably don't want to get too much into exactly what you do, but for admin kind of work the busiest roles I've seen people do over the years are either working as PA to a CEO of a big company, or being the admin of a small company (less than 30 people).

All are fraught with risk of course. A CEO's PA can sometimes be under serious stress, the CEO can be a sh1thead and you can find yourself drunk out of your brains at 3am on a Saturday trying to sort out flights because your boss is stuck on some business trip (that's a real-world example I saw ).

If PA work isn't for you (it requires a very outgoing, very assertive kind of personality), then an office admin for a small company usually ends up doing 20 jobs they're completely unqualified for, from HR to Payroll to Secretary to Event Manager.

scheister

I spent time a few years ago working in data capture for a Bank and had similar problem. Think i had enough work to cover an hour or two a day. im my first 2 weeks working their i polished off the full hunger games book series on company time. After a while i went for hour long walks just i could not be seen at my desk doing nothing.

ixus

Springboard courses for FREE upskilling to degree and postgrad level at any University or Tech in the country. Can do evening and online courses. A lot of application deadlines today though.

https://springboardcourses.ie

You could have 10 applications in by COB today seeing as you have so much free time. Upgrade or develop a skill and move on.

If you're not hungry enough to change something now, you'll be writing the same post in 10yrs.