September 17, 2024
Third of workers admit to faking productivity
People used to walk around the office with pieces of paper to look like they were working. Now a new report suggests that a third of UK workers admit to ‘pretend productivity’ by other means. The poll from Workhuman claims that it is the pressure to appear busy that is driving workers to fake activity.
This pressure is characterised by recent reports of employees using mouse ‘jigglers’ to simulate working. The report also claims that unrealistic expectations and the need to avoid burnout are also significant factors behind the behaviour.
Aside from everyday distractions, managers acknowledge burnout as the number one cause behind employees faking activity. This reflects a broader issue: the open-ended nature of the modern work environment often demands that employees be ‘always on’—or at least appear to be.
For workers that are expected to be flexible with their hours to accommodate after-hours messages, emails, and meetings, this pressure intensifies, leading to 44 percent of employees engaging in fake productivity. The problem is even more pronounced when workers strongly agree they are expected to respond immediately to Slacks, Teams messages, or other non-email communications – pushing the rate of fake productivity up to a staggering 51 percent.
Alongside this shift, most managers (82 percent) believe that knowing the exact hours their employees work is key to measuring productivity. However, workers under strict time-tracking systems are more likely to fake activity. On the other hand, when time-tracking is the most relaxed, only one in four employees pretend to be working. This suggests that rigid tracking might actually promote fake productivity rather than curb it.
Consequently, the emphasis on constant availability and strict time-tracking may be counterproductive, impacting individual wellbeing and driving employees to fake productivity, the report argues.
A significant majority of managers (79 percent) see productivity and engagement as distinct concepts, where productivity is typically about output, and engagement refers to an employee’s genuine interest in and commitment to their work.
However, many organisations (66 percent) measure engagement purely by the volume of work completed. This approach can be problematic: while employees may complete tasks, it doesn’t necessarily reflect their level of engagement. When employees are disengaged, respondents report that they “do the bare minimum” to get by, leading to lower productivity and work quality.
