Why your boss still values performative busyness—and what to do about it

Workers feel a lot of pressure to prove that they’re productive, but research shows that “performative busyness” and “stress-bragging” can be damaging in the long run.

According to a recent survey of over 1,500 American full-time workers conducted by BambooHR almost everyone feels pressure to prove they’re being productive, regardless of whether they work remotely, in-person, or hybrid. As a result, many are employing tactics to signify to their managers and bosses that they’re actually working while on the clock.

According to the survey, 79% of in-office workers and 88% of remote workers feel the need to prove they’re being productive. In fact, 42% of hybrid and in-person workers say they come to the office just for visibility.

“Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of remote teams in our survey admit that they maintain constant online presence even when they may not be actively working,” says BambooHR’s head of human resources, Anita Grantham. “Especially if you have these workplace apps on your phone, you can leave them on even though you’re at the lake or doing something else.”

About a third of in-person workers, meanwhile, admit to intentionally showing up earlier or leaving later than their managers, and spend more time walking around the office, to show that they’re on-site in the wake of return-to-office (RTO) mandates.

Playing the role of a busy worker, however, may be necessary, as nearly a third of managers say they implemented RTO policies to track employee work habits.

Why We Feel the Need to Show Our Work

In recent years the nature of our work has gotten more difficult to quantify, while more of the actual work is getting done behind closed doors, making it harder to benchmark our efforts against our colleagues, explains Terry College of Business management professor Jessica Rodell.

“We still want a measuring stick to be able to understand our value and worth and to be able to compare that value and worth to others,” she says. “I think we are accidentally putting stress and busyness in that bucket to say, ‘well, if I leave work feeling really stressed, it must be because I’m a good employee.’”

Bragging about being stressed or busy can also be contagious, Rodell says—especially when it’s done or encouraged by managers—as it makes others feel self-conscious about their importance at work.

“When you work with people who are bragging about stress, they’re kind of sending a signal, like ‘hey, this is valued around here; if you want to be respected, you should do it, too,’” she says. “Then more people are doing it, and that becomes more stressful for more people.”

Why Performative Busyness Tends to Backfire

According to a study led by Rodell, however, those who brag about being stressed tend to accomplish less, and are often perceived more negatively by their peers.

“When we are quote-unquote ‘looking busy,’ we’re often focusing on those can-do tasks, not the should-do tasks,” she says. “We put the real substantive work on the back burner to instead look busier, which comes at a cost to our productivity and personal fulfillment in our jobs.”

According to Rodell’s study, “stress-bragging”—or talking about being stressed out with pride—is widely perceived negatively by colleagues and peers. In fact, people tend to think of those who do it often as less capable, not more.

“The perception is that they’re not as warm—which means we don’t like them as much—and they’re not as competent or capable in their jobs,” she says. “We still reward the person that is doing a lot and not calling as much attention to it.”

Not only does stress-bragging reflect poorly on the individual, but it can also create an unhealthy workplace culture, one where perception of getting things done becomes more highly valued than actually getting things done.

“If anything, a culture of busyness might backfire in terms of results, where you have people doing a lot of work that’s not overly relevant,” explains Adam Waytz, a professor of ethics and decision management at the Kellogg School of Management. “Furthermore, you’re not really doing any favors to peoples’ mental health.”

How to Reverse the Urge to Stress-Brag

If work cultures that reward performative busyness tend to create more stress and burnout, Waytz says the obvious antidote is for leaders to instead encourage breaks, time off, and work-life balance.

“The only way to change those cultures of busyness is through deliberate steps to say ‘we don’t want you to be busy or working all the time,’” he says. “One of the ways to reverse it is for leaders to model behavior that it’s okay to take some time for yourself, or putting policies in place that actually force people off the clock.”

While performative busyness remains pervasive, especially in remote and hybrid work settings, Waytz is encouraged to see the conversation around stress begin to shift in the wake of the pandemic.

“One of the buzzwords of the day is ‘burnout’. Every week there’s scores of stories about burnout, how to deal with burnout, how to manage burnout, and that suggests a shift,” he says. “People are talking more about work not as the be-all and end-all of what defines you, or saying ‘maybe work isn’t the most important thing in my life,’ or ‘maybe there are things beyond work in life,’ and that seems a bit new, post-COVID.’”