Many employees admit to appearing busy at work despite not being productive
A new report has found that employees from Asia are guilty of carrying out "performative work."
Findings from Slack's State of Work 2023 found that India, Japan, and Singapore had the highest numbers of employees who admitted to appearing busy at work even if they're not doing anything productive.
The three nations topped the global rankings in Slack's report, which overall included:
- India (43%)
- Japan (37%)
- Singapore (36%)
- France (31%)
- United Kingdom (30%)
- Australia (29%)
- Germany (29%)
- United States (28%)
- South Korea (28%)
On average, Slack's survey of over 18,000 respondents said they spend 32% of their time on performative work that gives the appearance of productivity.
In fact, 63% of the respondents said they try to keep their status active online even if they're not working, as 50% feel the pressure to let their colleagues know they are at work and being productive.
This comes as 27% of employers rely heavily on visibility and activity metrics as their top overall productivity measures, according to the report.
Meetings hitting worker productivity
Derek Laney, Slack's "technology evangelist" for Asia-Pacific, told CNBC that performative work also includes "spending a lot of time in meetings where 'teams present achievements' rather than making decisions or addressing issues."
"We know that the biggest challenges to productivity include spending too much time in meandering meetings, a deluge of email, and busywork that doesn't directly contribute to the company's bottom line," the report said.
Aside from productivity, previous research also pointed out that big companies are losing over $100 million due to unnecessary meetings.
Addressing 'performative work'
According to the report, organisations can carry out various measures, such as holding fewer and better meetings, to cut down performative work by employees.
In fact, respondents said 43% of their meetings could be "eliminated with no real adverse consequences."
"Teams should champion impromptu huddles to quickly solve problems, along with asynchronous audio and video clips to relay information," the report said.
Employers should also find the right mix of inputs and outputs in measuring productivity in the workplace, according to the report.
Many employees in the survey said they prefer to be measured based on what they produce or achieve, followed by the quality of their work, their personal growth and skill development, as well as other production measurements.
"Anyone can game a single metric, so you must consider a blend of leading and lagging indicators," said Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of the software developer platform Stack Overflow, in the report.
"The lagging indicator is what happened. It's 'reading the news,' and if you look at it in isolation, it's not very helpful—whereas leading indicators give you a proactive look at the speed and progress the company is making."
