How to Eliminate Employee Productivity Theater and Prevent ‘Resenteeism’
With pressure to lay off staff building, companies are employing various employee surveillance methods to see who is performing and who is not. As a result, 79% of employees in a recent survey said they were under pressure to show that they were working. This leads to anxiety, a lack of engagement, and twin phenomenon called productivity theater and the mouse shuffle.
What Is Productivity Theater?
Productivity theater refers to the act of appearing to work rather than actually working, and even the best employees can fall prey to it. Invasive tracking solutions are often the cause of productivity theater.
When employees know they are being judged on certain metrics, many will try to perform to those metrics, which leads to the mouse shuffle - the process of doing activities for the sole purpose of hitting the metrics of surveillance software. These actions can include jiggling mice, randomly loading different software programs, and, in some cases, even using their own software that mimics the actions that are being surveilled.
If you think your team isn’t doing any of this, think again; 43% of employees who were being actively tracked said they spend more than 10 hours a week on tasks that make them look good to these programs. While some of that work may be real, much of it is low-level busy work. It may also include things like answering emails immediately, which can divert attention from more important tasks and prevent deep work.
You want your employees to engage in deep work rather than low-level administrative tasks, and you definitely don’t want them multitasking all day, which is a proven productivity killer. If you’re losing 10 hours a week from 43% of your team to productivity theater, plus more to multitasking, your business has just shot itself in the foot by installing invasive surveillance software.
In addition, by invasively monitoring staff and treating them like children, employers are tacitly encouraging them to act out. It also feeds into ‘resenteeism,’ the blanket term for negative feelings that employee surveillance creates in a workforce.
Don’t Use Tech Solutions That Invite Productivity Theater
A lot of businesses adopt invasive monitoring solutions because they don’t know that there are better solutions out there that only monitor business applications and focus on metrics that matter rather than tracking an employee’s every move.
Employees generally accept that there is some level of workplace monitoring in the form of flagging problematic internet use, logging hours for billing purposes, and other passive techniques.
Productivity theater only happens when you are using invasive solutions that track things like keystrokes, mouse movements, personal websites, and so on. There are employee-friendly and business-centric employee monitoring solutions out there, like Prodoscore, which does not create the “resenteeism” that so many other solutions do.
Plus, employees can access Prodoscore for feedback about their own productivity and use it to self-coach and improve. And, Prodoscore customers value the resulting flexibility the solution offers employees because leaders feel confident about accountability. That level of employee involvement is key to getting buy-in and promoting a positive work culture.
Did you pick the wrong solution that’s driving your employees to do the mouse shuffle? Don’t worry, we’ve got the right one with Prodoscore.
