We’re all familiar with the experience of working for a micromanager. It’s the director who constantly checks on you via your employee tracking software or the owner who feels the need to sit in on every meeting you schedule with a client.
These days, some micromanagement takes a more subtle, but still exhausting, form. It’s the expectation to stay visible and busy, always ready to answer a question or hop on a new task.
On paper, this type of micromanagement seems innocuous. However, it still creates the same pressure as more overt forms of micromanagement, but this type comes with an unspoken set of rules you have to learn as you go.
Let’s talk about how this shows up in hybrid and remote teams, as well as strategies to help push back or change the ‘busyness’ expectations that have been put on your team.
Four signs your team is optimizing for appearances instead of progress
We’ve all heard the horror stories of companies that expect a green Slack status from 9-5, no exceptions and no excuses. But there are plenty of other ways that the ‘busyness’ requirements show up and slowly burn you out.
Sign 1: Employees are made to feel guilty when they’re hard to reach
Imagine that your software developer is making great progress on a difficult project. They’re focused, in a flow state, and finally solving a problem that’s been sitting on their plate for a week.
Then they notice a missed Slack message that their teammate sent a few hours ago. Suddenly, instead of feeling productive, they start to panic. They feel the need to explain their delay instead of simply replying to the message when they have a break in their day.
The irony is that high-value work almost always requires temporary unavailability. It’s really hard to write a strategy document, build a financial model, or solve a complex technical problem when you’re simultaneously responding to every notification in real-time. Deep work requires periods of uninterrupted concentration.
When employees feel guilty for disconnecting long enough to focus, the company culture has taught them that responsiveness matters more than results.
Sign 2: You measure productivity by responsiveness
Responsiveness is easy to measure.
A manager can’t always see when a writer is deep into research or a designer is slowly progressing on the new package design. But they can see who replies to their emails within minutes or attends every team meeting (even the irrelevant ones).
Over time, that visibility influences performance measures. Employees who always respond right away must be more engaged and productive, right? Meanwhile, employees who keep their heads down and focus on their actual tasks seem less involved because they don’t communicate as much.
As a result, employees who want to get ahead (i.e., get that promotion or secure a raise) learn to play the game. They optimize their habits to prioritize responsiveness, even if it’s at the expense of their output. Once companies start rewarding visibility, it’s only a matter of time before employees spend more energy staying visible than advancing projects.
Sign 3: Your team spends more time coordinating than executing
In companies that value visibility, meetings are everything. There’s a kickoff meeting to discuss the project, then a planning meeting to align on priorities. You can’t skip the weekly status meeting to see how everyone is coming along, or the cross-functional chat to ensure all departments are on board.
All of that talking about work doesn’t give people enough time to actually work.
Meetings aren’t inherently bad, but most meetings aren’t worth the time they take. Even though the constant meetings cost more than they make you, it’s usually a given that you’ll be at every meeting you’re invited to, whether or not your presence would actually be beneficial.
Sign 4: Everyone is busy, but the work isn’t moving forward as it should
This is where your visibility culture becomes really obvious and really damaging to your bottom line.
Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index found that 62% of a knowledge worker’s day is lost to ‘work about work,’ described as “the activities that take time away from meaningful work, including communicating about work, searching for information, switching between apps, managing shifting priorities, and chasing the status of work.” Over the course of a year, this averages out to 103 hours in unnecessary meetings, 209 hours on duplicative work, and 352 hours talking about work.
Some of those activities do need to happen, but a lot of them are preventing employees from doing the skilled labor they were hired to perform.
The hidden costs of expecting employees to stay busy and visible
It can be tempting to dismiss visibility culture as a minor annoyance. Staying busy and available is part of having a job, right?
As it turns out, there are major consequences to this kind of expectation.
Some estimates suggest that micromanagement costs US companies nearly $400 billion annually in turnover and lost productivity. In your day-to-day operations, the repercussions may not be obvious.
This is how they show up:
Low employee morale and engagement.
Employees want to have the autonomy to do their job as they see fit. It can feel demeaning to constantly disrupt their workflow for unnecessary communication, and it may be detrimental to their focus and attention. People who don’t feel trusted end up checking out or looking for a new employer who actually trusts their expertise.
A lack of innovation
It takes time, freedom, and independence to innovate in the workplace. When an employee’s every move is being tracked and scrutinized, they’re more likely to play it safe and do whatever it takes to avoid negative feedback.
Fragmented focus
Flow state, where meaningful progress is made, requires a distraction-free environment. When the expectation is that you immediately respond to every message or notification, it’s impossible to ever enter a flow state.
Lower quality work
For many things in life, fast ≠ good. Our work is no different.
Employees who need to prioritize responsiveness over thoughtfulness often sacrifice the quality of their work. They reply before they’ve fully considered the issue, or they skim instead of reading carefully.
At times, a fast response can be useful, but a well-considered response is usually more valuable.
Three ways to transform your visibility culture
This isn’t a ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ situation. Every company needs visibility among employees and leadership, just not always to the extent that it’s currently expected.
The trick is to stop treating busyness as a substitute for progress. To change the culture, leaders need to make it clear that outcomes matter more than appearances.
Create visibility through outcomes
By now, we’ve established that busyness is easier to observe than productivity. A manager can see who’s active in Slack, and there’s a clear record of who’s attending meetings. What’s harder to see is the deep work that happens behind the scenes, especially when it’s a project that takes a long time to complete or a task that involves a lot of brainstorming and thought work.
To counteract this, make outcomes the primary source of visibility. Ask teams to share completed work or obstacles they addressed, and get rid of the need for constant updates.
For example, which update is more useful?
“I’ve been working on the newsletter and coordinating with the providers to get quotes from them.”
–or–
“The newsletter copy and design revisions are finalized. Sam is proofreading it, and then I will schedule it to send on Thursday morning.”
Protect focus time like a meeting
Why are we so prone to protect meetings but willingly sacrifice focus time, when one offers a lot more progress than the other?
The work that creates value isn’t usually happening in meetings. It requires uninterrupted periods of concentration, yet the average employee is interrupted once every two minutes. In a visibility-first culture, it’s not possible to ignore those interruptions without facing consequences.
One of the best things you can do for employees is to encourage them to block out protected focus blocks, where they can turn off notifications, block meeting invites, and devote all of their attention to the task at hand.
To learn more about the benefits of focus sessions and how you can implement them, check out this guide.
Measure progress, not activity
A lot of our so-called ‘productivity metrics’ are actually activity metrics.
You determine which employees are most engaged or productive by looking at their response time or meeting attendance, but those metrics don’t give any indication about how well someone is doing their job.
A person who attends six meetings isn’t necessarily more productive than someone who spends six hours finishing a project. The first just did more visible work.
To change your company’s mindset around activity vs. output, focus only on what meaningful work your employees are accomplishing. Ask:
- What was completed this week?
- What moved forward?
- What obstacles were addressed?
This is where time data can come in handy.
RescueTime runs in the background and silently collects data about how users spend their time. Our Team Timesheets generate precise reports of your team’s workday that are helpful for payroll, billing, and performance insights. You can even set team targets to track the progress of several teams over days or weeks.
RescueTime can make it clear when too much time is being spent on communication, even detailing the exact apps and programs that employees are using throughout the day. You could set ideal limits for Slack time each week or get a better idea of how often notifications are interrupting focused work.
Those insights make it easier to notice when your organization is inadvertently prioritizing visibility over performance, and implement guardrails to help employees protect their focus time.
Use visibility to support work, not replace it
Don’t get me wrong, communication, collaboration, and visibility are important components of work. But they should all be considered means to an end, not part of the actual job expectations.
When employees spend more time ‘working on work’ than doing their actual job, something has gone awry. You need to be sure that you’re using visibility as a tool, not a goal.
