Productivity theatre: Asana study suggests employees fake busyness at work

The boss is walking over – quick, shut down Bluesky and tap open the spreadsheet!

Only two-thirds of employees engage in such productivity theatre, according to a survey by Asana – but clearly that simply means the other third are either lying or far too busy to ever take a break.

Asana describes productivity theatre as “when employees perform tasks to appear busy without actually doing meaningful work,” with the survey finding 65% admit to such dramatics, while 22% sometimes prioritise looking busy over actual work.

This can include having a meeting just for the sake of it (15% do this) or sending messages just to appear busy (41%).

There’s a real downside as workers who participate in productivity theatre are 13% more likely to feel burnout. That shouldn’t be a surprise: they’re behaving this way because of poor direction and pressure from management. Poor management plus busywork naturally leads to burnout.

Productivity theatre vs management theatre

Indeed, it’s not employees who are the problem, but managers who demand staff attend too many meetings, be reachable across myriad technology platforms, and be available beyond the paid-for 9 to 5.

Indeed, the research found that 45% of knowledge workers admit to making excuses or lying to avoid a meeting. That’s no surprise given the next three stats Asana offers: 48% say the last meeting they attended was unnecessary, 53% say it was a waste of time, and 61% said little was accomplished. If meetings are pointless, people won’t attend.

Other unnecessary wastes of time include technology. Asana said 63% of employees believe that too many tech tools are disrupting their work – and not in the fun startup type of disruption, but the “I can’t get anything done” kind. Because of this, three-quarters of respondents said they felt “digital exhaustion” and just as many wanted a “digital detox”.

Because of all this fake busywork, seven in ten respondents said they weren’t confident their boss had an “accurate understanding” of how much work they had to do.

How to avoid productivity theatre

If you as a manager aren’t sure about staff workloads – and overwork – then find out. Judge staff on their output, not day-to-day appearances of productivity, be it typing frantically at a desk in the office or quick Slack replies.

Really consider if an employee truly needs to come to a meeting before blindly inviting every team member, and don’t be offended if a staff member suggests they need not attend – there’s no need to be angry because they want to spend their time better, after all. Set aside your ego – if you’re the boss, you don’t need everyone to jump when you say so. Trust the people you hired to get on with their work.

Asana’s research called for employers to tame tool bloat, reducing the need to switch between contexts such as email and messaging; cut down on unnecessary meetings, helping to give staff more time and avoiding “meeting recovery syndrome”, where staff need time to get back to work; and give staff clear ownership of their work, so they feel accountable.

“With this clarity, there’s less room for ‘pretending to be busy’ and more focus on real productivity – employees are 24% less likely to perform productivity theatre,” the report said.

But also admit that sometimes people need a few minutes off from work. We aren’t capable of working at full productivity for eight hours straight, after all. Consider keeping an entire day free from meetings – Meeting Free Mondays, or whichever day works best – and encourage employees to block out chunks of their calendars for focused work without disruption from constant notifications.

After all, if staff feel the need to book in a fake meeting to recover from half a day’s worth of Zoom calls, that’s not productivity theatre, that’s being human and resting.

Related articles

• What is rust-out – and how to help your staff avoid it
• LinkedIn says the pace of change at work is speeding up
• What is quiet quitting?