Doing your job well is only half the job these days. The other half is making sure everyone saw you do it.
In the U.K., they’re calling it “loud working.” A new survey from business platform Tide found that workers spend an average of 2.8 hours a week making sure their efforts get noticed. Tide estimates that adds up to 131 hours a year, or over 17 working days devoted to talking about work instead of doing it.
There’s always someone at work who needs an audience for everything they do. A meeting can’t end without them mentioning how much they’ve accomplished, and they make sure the boss always hears about every extra hour they’ve put in. Meanwhile, everyone else is just trying to get through the workday.
Employees Are Wasting Nearly 3 Hours a Week Trying to Prove They’re Working
For some workers, it’s become unbearable. Tide found that 27% of U.K. respondents had considered leaving a job because of the pressure to promote themselves, and nearly one in 10 said they’d already quit over it.
Employee relations expert Jim Moore of Hamilton Nash told Metro that office self-promotion has been around forever. We’ve just given it a new name and a LinkedIn account.
There’s also the related business of looking busy, even when you’re getting very little done. In Slack’s 2023 State of Work survey of over 18,000 desk workers worldwide, respondents estimated spending 32% of their work time on tasks meant to create the appearance of productivity rather than contribute to company goals. For U.S. respondents, that figure was 28%. Another 63% of workers across the survey admitted they tried to keep their online status active even when they weren’t working.
Some of this comes from management. Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index found that 87% of employees felt productive, but only 12% of leaders said they had full confidence in their teams’ productivity. Microsoft called the disconnect “productivity paranoia.”
It’s not hard to see how that creates an office full of people desperate to prove they’re working. When the boss pays attention to who’s talking the most, the employee quietly getting everything done can look like the one who isn’t pulling their weight.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting recognition for a job well done. But when workers feel pressured to announce every accomplishment, it’s fair to wonder how much anyone is paying attention to the actual work.
Then again, someone has to write those LinkedIn posts about being humbled and honored to announce another exciting professional milestone.
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