The Country That Pretends to Be Busy Without Real Benefit at Work, Ranked #1 Is Not Korea

Slack and Qualtrics Survey Results... India Ranks 1st
"Work for Work's Sake" Time Reported Highest
2nd Japan, 3rd Singapore... South Korea 9th

Long working hours do not necessarily mean faster work progress. A research company conducted a survey of over 18,000 executives worldwide and found that employees in most countries spend a certain portion of their time on 'work for the sake of work,' which takes away time from their actual tasks.

On the 13th (local time), US CNBC reported that this result appeared in a survey conducted by the global enterprise messaging platform Slack and the research firm Qualtrics.

[Image source=Pixabay]

Slack particularly pointed out a tendency to focus on 'Performative Work' in Asian countries. Performative work refers to formal tasks that are largely unrelated to actual productivity, instead of genuinely productive work.

The countries with the highest proportions of respondents who said they spend time on performative work were India (43%) in first place, Japan (37%) in second, and Singapore (36%) in third?all Asian countries.

Following them were France (31%), the United Kingdom (30%), Australia (29%), Germany (29%), the United States (28%), and South Korea (28%). Except for the top three, most other developed countries showed slight differences ranging from 28% to 31%.

Derek Lani, a Slack representative, explained, "Performative work includes meaningless repetitive meetings and showy email handling," adding, "Ultimately, it is busywork performed to appear diligent to supervisors rather than actual work that benefits the company."

Executives' Performance Evaluations Increase Employees' Unproductive Work... "Only Eye-Catching Tasks"

Executives of Indian companies.
Photo by AP Yonhap News

So, what causes the increase in the proportion of performative work? Lani pointed out that executives' performance evaluations likely increase employees' unproductive tasks.

He said, "Executives are more likely to evaluate based on visible activities rather than actual results," adding, "This causes employees to become obsessed with performative work."

In other words, because evaluations are based on visible indicators such as the number of emails sent and working hours rather than actual achievements, working hours become longer while work progress remains sluggish.

Lani added, "In fact, recent Slack surveys found that corporate executives evaluate based on the number of emails sent and online working hours."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.