Ask Christa! How Do I Stay Engaged When I'm So Underutilized at Work? (S4E48)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and today’s listener question is about having so much more to offer, more to give, more to do, more to think about, handle, be accountable for, feel pressure about… and yet… you languish… you stretch out a day… you get up, take a walk… get your work done in record time… sit back down… straighten out your desk… all because… you’re so underutilized.

When organizations lack a strong talent management strategy, they fall into the primary wasteful dysfunctions of an organization: either your quality suffers because you’re overutilized with resources, stretching them to a point of breaking or over-utilizing them to a point of failure, or the exact opposite: you’re underutilizing your resources, which also means quality will suffer…

I hear leaders talk a lot about the cost of their talent, and we ALL see companies in the news who are so mismanaged that the only way they can recover is through a layoff. Now, I want to be clear that if you have a big shift in your market or your customer base, or if there’s a natural disaster that changes the landscape of your revenue cycles, or if there are any other risks that happen that mean you need to make drastic changes to your organization in order to keep it going, that’s different. But mismanaging your talent is often a self-inflicted massive point of failure within an organization, and entirely unnecessary.

And these days, NO ONE is going to volunteer if they have the right amount of work but have mastered it to the point where they feel under-utilized, and being underutilized doesn’t mean you don’t have enough work to do. It means you can do so much more, either because you’ve upskilled or outgrown the role, or because you’ve found a scale of economy—or a really efficient way of working—that means you can take on maybe 4 or 5 more hours of work a week.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question: “I’ve been a document analyst in a highly regulated industry for 15 years. I joined my current company five years ago, and I stuck with them through a lot of difficult circumstances during the pandemic. Back then I was able to stretch and grow and do a lot of extra work, but when we moved out of the pandemic, much of that extra work went away. I’m back to doing what I’ve been doing for several years, and I feel like I can do the work in my sleep. I want to do more, but I’m also afraid that in this economy, if I say I have bandwidth then they may re-evaluate whether they need me when all I’m looking to do is help out more. I’m starting to feel like I’m burnt out doing nothing, though. Is that a thing? How can I stay engaged with I feel so underutilized?”

Yes, Languishing at Work is a Thing…

Growing up, we had a saying in my family when we had a lazy day and felt even more tired at the end of it: we’d say, “I’m tired from doing nothing.”

There are times when feeling aimless, lacking a sense of a bigger goal, or simply disengaging from your day to day can be wildly restorative. You’re giving yourself a break from the driving, doing, getting done energy that many of us feel throughout our days.

But when this happens more chronically, more regularly, more consistently in our day to day, you start to take on a different feeling of being aimless and lacking a sense of a bigger goal, which often leads to feeling un-engaged —as if you’re floating along without belonging to anything or feeling a sense of purpose in what you do. Languishing at work is a real thing, and it’s usually about feeling disconnected from your work and/or your workplace, where you go there, exist during the workday, then go home. Ho-hum stuff.

Now, there’s nothing new or innovative or different I can tell you that a basic Google search on this topic won’t provide, but I DO want to normalize the underscore that being underutilized leads to feeling under-challenged, and that ABSOLUTELY leads to feeling disengaged… and… it also leads to the same feeling of burn out that you would feel if you were OVERWORKED.

In fact, while burn out is typically associated with work overload, there are other kinds of burn out, one of them being associated with feeling under-challenged and under-utilized; where you could be doing so much more than you’ve been assigned, or when you could use a zip in your work and feel more challenged, but the opportunities for that simply aren’t there. That might be because the WORK isn’t there, or it might be because you’ve over-developed yourself and deserve a new challenge, or a mix of the two.

Organizations increase their performance one employee at a time, and you see big gains when it happens at the team, department, and ESPECIALLY at the cross-functional level, but the organization also needs scalability to accommodate for that level of performance development. There are times when organizations stifle or stop investing in that level of development, and this is often when you see your star performers—or even your regular steady-eddy performers—ready to take on more of a challenge and more work, but there isn’t the opportunity to do so. 

And in that way, it’s not always an employee issue; in fact, most time it’s an organizational issue where the structure and ways of working simply cannot accommodate for a bump-up in organizational development and performance improvement.

Feeling Vulnerable While Underutilized is Also a Thing…

Then there’s the part about feeling vulnerable when you feel like you have more capacity, or more hours, than your work provides—and I’m not talking about going from a 50 hour work week and lunches at your desk every day with no breaks in between to a reasonable 40 hour work week with half hour lunches and a couple smaller breaks during the day. Sometimes people think they have all this capacity and feel underutilized simply because they’ve been able to right-size their work week and went from being OVER capacity or OVER utilized to the RIGHT capacity. Relatively, it FEELS like they are now underutilized, but they aren’t. They are at the right capacity

Aside from that, though, especially over the last twenty years where layoffs are more constant than they used to be, it is natural to feel vulnerable when you feel underutilized, as though feeling you have time to spare is a bad thing.

Here is where your VALUE—what you give back to the organization—matters. As you contemplate feeling underutilized, I want you to also think about where else you might be useful—but only as it completes your work week, creates a feeling of fulfillment, and provides an opportunity for you to feel like you are giving something of yourself that will combat the sense of languishing; the sense of feeling underutilized. You need a Goldilocks Moment, one where you feel your utilization is “just right.”

If you have a great boss and a keen organization focused on adding value to your customers by way of good humans as employees, you’ll be able to talk through ways to add more value so you are rounding out your work week and giving just a bit more to feel fulfillment without taking on more than you should or can.

If you don’t feel you can discuss it with your boss, then seek ways to help others anyway, and align that to organizational goals, then introduce the idea to your boss as an extra so you can contribute more. 

This is When Trust Matters Most: Being Honest About Capacity

And here is when trust matters. When employees can be honest about their capacity—honest about whether they feel under or over utilized, managers and leaders can make changes and adjustments that will usually enable the organization to work better. It’s just… a lot of us don’t work in organizations that work that way—and that’s for a different episode. 

But whether you can talk to your manager as a means to solve an underutilization issue, or simply add yourself to an initiative or a team to round out your work week then tell your manager how you’re helping, be sure you’re clear on the timing, scope, and expectations of taking on the extra work. You’ll also want to be sure you’re aligned with any development plans or promotional opportunities that might be ahead of you. 

Any work you are doing should be understood and recognized as the value you are adding, so yes—volunteer or formally request taking on whatever is needed to level you up to proper utilization, but do it in the context of your bigger career perspective. Any work you do should be recognized as value added to the organization, even if by taking on the work you’re also feeling more fulfilled. 

And if there’s a lull because of client activity or perhaps something else happening in the organization, take the opportunity to develop yourself in other ways during a time when you’re feeling underutilized: a certificate program, a graduate degree, or any other educational development opportunity. It might re-engage you at work and also lead to bigger and better things for you at your organization… or… at other organizations in your future.

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included an article from the University of Illinois Gies College of Business from September 2025 called “Flourishing or languishing? What Gies experts say about Workplace Well-being.” It offers common language and descriptions of what I’ve discussed here and offers additional information and perspective, including additional business research at the end of the page. It’s a quick read and a great way to get you started on thinking this important topic through.

Next up: an August 2022 article from Melody Wilding, published in HBR, called “3 types of burnout and how to overcome them.” You’ll read more about burn out from feeling under-challenged and gain perspective about burnout overall.

Last, a video from Dr. Rebecca Heiss from April 2022 called “How to get out of Languishing.” It’s under five minutes, she presents with great personality, and offers solid tips for getting back into the game.”

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

And there it is—the last episode for Season 4, which focused on Doing the Work! As we put episode 48 behind us, we look to Season 5, which focuses on Career Growth, and this episode was a great transition episode because a lot about career growth is self-awareness and self-direction based on interests, gaps, the reality of your work and life situation, and your aspirations. I’ve received a lot of questions about career growth, so Season 5 will be another consolidation season where I consolidate similar questions, select the one that best represents common questions, and answer those.

You can submit YOUR question on my show’s site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, where you will see all my episodes listed based on category and season. While your there—sign up for my More Answers… newsletter, where you will receive additional content on Sunday nights to set you up for the work week.

As always—thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!