Nearly 4 in 10 leaders admit to ‘false productivity,’ Workhuman finds

Brief description of the dive:

• According to Workhuman’s Global Human Workplace Index 3Q study, the perpetrators of “false productivity” – feigning professional activity while performing professional duties – are leaders themselves, to a greater extent than their employees.
• According to a study by Workhuman of 3,000 salaried workers in the US, UK and Ireland, nearly 4 in 10 C-level executives (38%) and 37% of all managers admit to faking their work, compared with 32% of non-managers and an average of 33% of all respondents.
• “Managers and leaders are stewards of a company’s culture,” the workplace technology and services platform said in an Aug. 29 report. The fact that they feign productivity more often than non-managers suggests that “the pressure to perform may be coming from the top,” Workhuman said.

Diving Insight:

Mouse tremors? Timesheet falsification? Workhuman’s findings on “false productivity” address two of the most important issues facing business and HR leaders: declining productivity and toxic work cultures.

“With trends like quiet vacations and Great Detachment at the forefront,” it’s no wonder CEOs are concerned, the platform said.

Previous analysis by leadership consulting firm EY-Parthenon found that workplace productivity fell by 2.7% in the first quarter of 2023. It was the fifth consecutive quarter in which employee productivity fell.

Concerns have surfaced in the new year. In a January study cited in the Workhuman report, Fortune 500 CEOs identified low productivity as their biggest organizational challenge for 2024.

Meanwhile, HR Dive’s Identity of HR 2024 study, released in April, found that the biggest challenge facing HR professionals — beyond recruiting, training and compliance — is maintaining a supportive and positive work culture where employees feel engaged and motivated.

Workhuman’s study sheds light on the link between productivity and workplace culture: 69% of managers who admitted to faking activism said it was a common problem among their team; only 37% of managers who didn’t fake activism considered it a problem.

“This shows that false productivity can be a symptom of a bad culture, creating a toxic cycle between performative productivity and fear of productivity,” the platform said.

According to the report, the top two reasons employees feel the need to fake activity — to achieve better work-life balance and recover from burnout — point to another symptom of a bad culture: low well-being.

“The drive to fake activity for the sake of feeling good indicates that employees do not live in a culture where they feel comfortable expressing their need to disconnect from work,” Workhuman notes.

One solution, recommended in the report, is to focus on the quality of work and results, rather than the number of hours spent online or at a desk. This could be key to relieving workers caught up in the “crazy farce of false productivity,” as the guide says.

Manager engagement is also key: 61% of respondents who said their managers are extremely engaged said they are always engaged. That number drops to 26% when managers have little or no involvement in their employees’ work, the study found.

Worryingly, more than half of respondents (54%) said that when they are not engaged, their coping strategy is to do the bare minimum to get through the day and get what they can done.

To improve this troubling situation and increase productivity, HR departments and business leaders should consider redesigning jobs to adapt to the changing needs of the organization, recommends an August advisory from McLean & Co.

Working in line with company goals can improve productivity, for example by minimizing the risk of error, the guide says. It can also increase employee well-being by improving the clarity and autonomy of work, removing or streamlining repetitive tasks and resolving workload imbalances, the guide says.