Modern Managers:
Forced to Fake It?
Firms that put managers under too much stress risk unproductive outcomes.
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Once upon a time, not too long ago, the role of a manager was well respected. People aspired to be managers; being a manager meant being successful. But nowadays, the job doesn’t carry so much cachet. It doesn’t even guarantee job security, which is why a lot of managers may be pretending to work harder than they actually do.
It sounds like something out of the classic movie Office Space: More than one-third of managers admit to faking work sometimes. Their tricks for doing so range from the elaborate to the mundane: blocking time on Outlook calendars to mask availability, finishing assignments early but holding them, or employing digital tools to mimic keystrokes or computer activity, among others.
Bradford Bell, director of the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, believes faking work is a function of an entrenched leadership modus operandi that equates how much a person works with how good they are at their job. “It’s a form of self-preservation,” says Bell. When they’re judged by the wrong metrics, he says, managers feel they need to fake work to enhance their reputations and bolster the impression that they are top performers.
It’s not a new phenomenon, of course—long before remote work, managers were sitting at their desks doing nothing but making sure they were being seen. But in the officeless new world, the stakes are higher. Companies are cutting back on and downsizing management roles. Middle managers are particularly vulnerable, and remote middle managers are seriously endangered. The pressure to look constantly productive is immense, says Deepali Vyas, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry and global head of the firm’s Fintech, Payments, and Crypto practice. “A lot of managers are afraid of being seen as replaceable or not meeting expectations when resources are already stretched thin,” she says.
To many experts, all of this pretending suggests a deeper problem, one that firms and leaders may regret. Studies show that fewer and fewer people aspire to management—they are actively shunning it, in fact. Just under 40 percent of people in a survey earlier this year said they would pass up being promoted to a manager, citing workload, stress, and work-life balance as more important. It doesn’t help, says Peter Cappelli, director of the Wharton School’s Center for Human Resources, that companies are increasingly offering these promotions without a corresponding pay increase. Last year, 37 percent of firms gave workers these so-called “dry promotions.”
While it’s tempting to lay the blame for faking work on a minority of low-performing managers, experts say they’re not what’s driving the trend. What’s behind it, they say, are a variety of factors, including burnout, unrealistic demands, and constant monitoring. Bell says firms could neutralize managers’ impulse to fake work by measuring outcomes instead of optics. In a cruel twist of fate for leaders, remote and hybrid work may ultimately push them to adopt that approach, whether they like it or not. “More organizations are focusing on evaluating the results that employees are producing, rather than just how much they are working,” says Bell.
Photo Credits: Boris Zhitkov/Getty Images
