One of the big benefits promised by remote work is the end of "productivity theater." If an employee is a hundred miles away from the boss, why should they bother creating yet another project-tracking document or scheduling pointless meetings just to appear busy? Instead, why not slip in 20 minutes of yoga or feed your cat until you actually have something to do? That kind of flexibility is, of course, humane and sensible. But experts also say that not filling every spare moment of your workday actually helps you get more done in the long run too. It makes truly flexible, asynchronous remote work deeply seductive. Unfortunately, according to a new report by software companies Qatalog and GitLab, it's still mostly not happening. Remote workers continue to waste more than an hour of every day performing productivity during set office hours, it found. 

Drawing on surveys of 2,000 knowledge workers in the U.S. and U.K., the two companies' new "Killing Time at Work" report finds that online workers are behaving too much like cubicle warriors of decades past. "The dramatic workplace shifts of the pandemic gave us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how we work forever. We could have restructured work to be asynchronous, allowing us to build work around our lives, but we failed. Now, our research shows we're falling back into old habits--ones that should have been cast aside when we had the chance," writes Qatalog founder and CEO Tariq Rauf in the report. In practice, that looks like remote workers joining Zoom meetings they know will be worthless, responding to emails at strategically selected hours, or other forms of being ostentatiously online to convince colleagues they're working long and hard enough. This kind of digital presenteeism eats up a full 67 minutes of the average remote worker's day, the research found. A lot of time is wasted on productivity theater. It also probably means lower quality work as well, according to the report. "An overwhelming majority of people (81%) believe they are more productive and create higher quality output when they have more flexibility over when they work," it finds.  

What's the solution for bosses that would like their teams to actually be working (or even resting) rather than pretending to work? The report stresses the importance of making work not just remote but also genuinely asynchronous. Some things, like brainstorming sessions and decision-making meetings, require gathering everyone together at the same time. But a lot of heads-down execution can be done whenever. It doesn't matter if Jane works on her part of the project at 11 p.m. while early riser Joe is up at 5 a.m. to do his part, as long as neither is a bottleneck for the team. But while this is true in principle, informal norms and tech challenges mean that many workers feel compelled to prove they're busy and online during traditional working hours. They're remote but not maximally asynchronous, which defeats many of the advantages of a remote setup. "More than half of workers (54%) say their colleagues are stuck in old habits, and almost two-thirds of people (63%) believe that management and senior leadership within their organization 'prefer a traditional culture with employees in the office.' And when employees can't be in the office, presenting themselves as 'online' is likely seen as the next best thing," the report says.