When Looking Busy Becomes the Job

Episode summary: When looking busy becomes the job

Do you ever feel like corporate work is sometimes one big performance? Being visible, staying online, attending meetings and keeping that little Teams dot green can all become evidence that you are working.

Some jobs genuinely require presence and activity. But for knowledge workers hired for their expertise, judgement or creative thinking, visible activity can be a poor measure of the value they produce.

In this episode of Track Changes On, Caroline Warnes explores the difference between a performance culture and a performative culture, and what happens when organisations confuse activity with productivity.

Drawing on her own experience of having some of her best ideas away from her computer, she looks at research into walking, creative thinking and the incubation effect to explore why valuable cognitive work does not always look like work. She also examines research into electronic performance monitoring and asks whether increasingly sophisticated employee surveillance actually improves performance.

The episode also looks at return-to-office mandates and the performance of collaboration. If an organisation can measure how many people came into the office, does that tell it whether meaningful collaboration happened or whether the work improved?

As AI changes how quickly knowledge workers can produce certain outputs, Caroline asks whether management practices built around visible activity are becoming increasingly disconnected from the work organisations actually need people to do.

In this episode

* Why visible activity can be a poor proxy for knowledge-worker productivity* What research into walking and incubation tells us about creative thinking* Why employee monitoring can change behaviour without improving performance* How return-to-office mandates can confuse physical presence with collaboration* Why AI makes the distinction between activity and outcomes increasingly important

Research referenced in this episode

Ravid, D. M., White, J. C., Tomczak, D. L., Miles, A. F. & Behrend, T. S. (2023). A meta-analysis of the effects of electronic performance monitoring on work outcomes. Meta-analysis of 94 independent samples involving 23,461 workers. The study found no evidence that electronic performance monitoring improved worker performance and found an association with increased worker stress.

Oppezzo, M. & Schwartz, D. L. (2014). Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(4), 1142–1152. DOI: 10.1037/a0036577.

Sio, U. N. & Ormerod, T. C. (2009). Does incubation enhance problem solving? A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 94–120. DOI: 10.1037/a0014212.

Bloom, N., Han, R. & Liang, J. (2024). Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance. Nature, 630, 920–925. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07500-2. The randomised controlled trial of 1,612 employees found that hybrid working reduced attrition by one-third without damaging performance.

Companion article

This episode is accompanied by a full article on Track Changes On, where the ideas, research and practical reflections are explored in greater depth.

Supporting the show

If you enjoy Caroline's work and would like to support it, here are a few things she's created.

🛒 Track Changes On Shop - Coffee mugs & insulated tumblers for corporate rebels

📖 Do Give Up Your Day Job - Guide to corporate exits and transitions to self-employment

Subscribe

Subscribe to Track Changes On for weekly conversations about the future of corporate work, AI, careers and organisational change.

Connect with Caroline

📸 Instagram | 🧵 Threads | 🔗 LinkedIn