Analysis: A summer stocktake about workplace dissatisfaction is often a sign that questions need to be asked about the conditions of the work itself
The summer months often create a pause in the working year. It’s a pause long enough to notice what the usual pace can conceal, even if not always long enough to know what to do about it. This can often act as a trigger for a broader stocktake and an opportunity to consider whether the work we are doing still stretches or develops us.
Some jobs do not break people and instead, they quietly shrink them. The job pays the mortgage, the routine fits around life and you have a safe rhythm going. The job may no longer be stretching you, but it is serving a purpose. To reflect on that tension is not about demanding dramatic reinvention or to argue that everyone should leave a stable job in search of something more exciting. Rather, it is to consider whether the work that sustains us also leaves enough room for growth.
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In light of the rise of AI and redundancies, it might seem indulgent or ungrateful to want growth when others are anxious about having a job at all. When workplace dissatisfaction rears its head, it can be treated as a failure of perspective rather than a sign that questions need to be asked about the conditions of work itself.
Burnout or rustout?
In my research on the occupational well-being of professionals, I have been interested in the concept of rustout. Rustout is different from burnout, which is about too much workplace stress for too long with too little time to recuperate. Rustout is quieter and less dramatic, but not necessarily less serious. It is the slow erosion that can occur when people remain capable and active, yet feel underused, constrained, or no longer meaningfully stretched in their workplace. It does not happen overnight, but happens through repetition, unused talents and skills and the steady sense that the work asks less of you than you have to give.
Rustout can be mistaken for a lack of ambition or for the recent trend of quiet quitting, but my research suggests the opposite. The people describing experiences of rustout were not indifferent to work; in fact, they cared deeply about it. What troubled them was not the effort needed at work, but the absence of meaningful development. They spoke about being unable to use their creativity or professional judgement in ways that felt valuable to them. They were still doing the job, doing it very well, meeting expectations, and showing up. From the outside, nothing looked especially wrong. But inside the work, something had narrowed.
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‘We are not designed to be static’
A person can be busy all day and still feel underused. They can answer emails, attend meetings and keep everything moving as it should, but also have the uneasy sense that very little of their talents and skills are actually required. One of the challenges with rustout is it can hide inside competence.
The work is stll being done (and done to a high standard), so the problem is very easy to miss. One participant in my research described feeling as though they were “feeding the machine rather than being creative”. Another spoke of reaching the end of the week having “produced nothing” and with “no sense of development”. They were both describing effort without growth, in other words, having a job or role that feels professionally empty.
You might say ‘just leave”, but many going through this experience of rustout feel held back from moving precisely because of their sense of duty to their role or because their work is closely aligned with the professional identity they have developed. Some spoke of “salary traps”, not an elegant phrase, but an accurate description of not wanting to leave an unsatisfactory job to take a lower salary scale elsewhere.
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Others spoke about the relationships built at work, the way their lives had grown around the job, and the embedded realities that might force someone to stay still. For most people, that is the difficult truth: the reality of life can stop the reinvention story from happening. We hear of people who make brave decisions, retrain and have wonderful experiences. While those stories can be true, they aren’t available to everyone – and perhaps less available to women and mothers.
This is why rustout needs to be put on the workplace mental health agenda and taken as seriously as burnout. This is not because every work frustration is a crisis, nor because every person who feels restless should resign. Most of us cannot, and perhaps should not, organise our lives around every desire for change. Stability and responsibility matter, of course. But the question remains whether the life we are leading still leaves room for development. There needs to be room for creativity and imagination, not just competence. As Maya Angelou once said, “we aren’t designed to be static”.
Doing your summer stocktake
The answer to rustout doesn’t always require a dramatic departure. Sometimes that is not possible, and is also not the right course of action. But if you are experiencing rustout, it is worth paying close attention to what is causing the drain in your work. The problem may not be the volume of work at all, but the kind of work you are being asked to do: work that keeps you busy-busy while leaving your skills untapped.
There may still be room to develop and grow without leaving. That might mean having an honest conversation with your organisation about how your work can be made more meaningful. This could be through role-rotation, job-crafting or an opportunity to lead (or indeed step back from leadership). They may be small steps, but they demonstrate you are not willing to accept professional emptiness as the price of stability. None of this, of course, has the excitement of a great reinvention story. It is quieter and less dramatic, but it may help to slow the spread of ‘rust’.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
