Rethinking the busyness of business and the business of busyness

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans” wrote John Lennon in 1980. This is a perfectly apt synopsis of the culture of busyness that permeates 2023 U.S. corporate life. Research shows time and time again that “being busy” is as an aspirational status symbol in work-oriented, productivity-obsessed countries like the United States. If you’re busy, or appear to be people see you as competent, ambitious, and possessing knowledge and skills that are in high demand.

The problem:?executives, managers, corporations both large and small, colleagues, our friends… have both advertently and inadvertently created and amplified the ‘busy game.’ And yet – we wondered – isn’t playing this game potentially unproductive, exhausting, and detrimental to company culture and our personal well-being? It seems that reinforcing an always on culture runs counter to building workplace cultures that honor the whole person and appreciate their distinct contributions, as we and our colleagues have written about before .

We set out to explore: how do professionals feel about their own busyness??Do professionals think signaling busyness hurts or helps their professional career??Is there a right balance of signaling your business? (busy, but not too busy?)?

We argue that it’s time to ‘ban busy’, to eliminate not asking for help or a favor because you fear the other person is “too busy” and to resolve to help employees be more productive but perhaps less “busy” in 2023.

People still perceive a “busyness” premium

I believe the company culture of everyone thinking they need to be "busy" to be successful has many negative impacts. It becomes a status symbol, and prevents people from letting loose and connecting more outside of work (Male, 2nd-year Associate)

In our research, we asked more than 250 knowledge workers on (a) how busy they feel, (b) how they perceive others’ busyness and (c) why they do (or don’t) signal their own busyness to others in the firm – do they play the busy game?

Unsurprisingly, these are busy folks.?~70% of this group worked more than 50 hours in the past week, with just over 25% breaking 60 hours.

95% of professionals rated themselves as “somewhat” or “very busy” with the top reasons cited including:

·????????Having lots of work commitments

·????????Facing many factors out of their control - travel to clients, meeting times, deadlines

·????????Juggling lots of personal commitments

Men, in contrast to women, were three times as likely to think that busy people get better performance reviews and were more than twice as likely to say that they aspire to be busy because “people they admire also appear busy.”?

Who’s the busiest?

When it comes to who reported higher levels of busyness: it came as no surprise that people at higher levels of the organization (i.e., managers and above) reported feeling busier, especially more senior women.?Senior tenured employees rated themselves as “very busy” 55% of the time, compared to 30% for more junior employees (individual contributors).

People at higher levels of the organization also thought that others perceived them as busier, with over 98% of managers and above responding they believe others perceive them as “very or somewhat busy” compared to 79% for junior employees. These results held even when controlling for managers own levels of busyness.

Who signals their busyness to others versus hides it?

I think my partner and I would have more frank conversations about home, work and he would do more if I didn't play this game [hide how busy I was]. But I don't want to feel like I'm "dropping the ball" at home and prioritizing work over home or vice versa (Female, 2nd-year Consultant)

Despite how busy these employees self-reported, and in contrast to research suggesting we might signal our busyness to increase our social standing, more than half of our respondents actively tried to hide their busyness, especially from their direct managers, their romantic partner, and their families.?

They did this:

·????????To avoid appearing unavailable (89% of people said this is a top 3 reason to hide their busyness)

·????????To prevent loved ones from worrying about them (70%)

·????????To better support reports/mentees and make them more comfortable to ask for help (42%)

Our survey showed that some of the most common ways that people hid their busyness included: delaying emails (e.g., delaying an email to send at 8 AM rather than 2 AM when they actually wrote it), responding immediately to Slacks/Emails regardless of what they were doing and its importance, and simply masking feelings of exhaustion or burnout with a cheery, can-do attitude.

Women and female senior leaders want to appear less busy whereas men want to appear busy - but men aren’t always “working”…

Sometimes I hide how busy I am from people I manage, specifically to address the concern of them not feeling comfortable reaching out to me with work questions or not feeling like they can socialize with me (Female, Partner)

Women, especially younger women, were more likely than men to admit to hiding their busyness from their direct managers. 36% of women under 30 admitted to hiding their busyness from their direct managers, whereas only 19% of men under 30 said the same.

Women also tended to be slightly more worried than men about the possibility of appearing unavailable for new opportunities or the negative impact that appearing overly busy (i.e., overwhelmed) could have on their performance reviews.

Senior leaders, particularly women like the one quoted above, described wanting to appear less busy and often mentioned how, for the sake of the more junior members of their teams, they wanted to remain as approachable as possible.?

As we noted previously, men, in contrast to women, were three times as likely to think that busy people get better performance reviews and were more than twice as likely to say that they aspire to be busy because “people they admire also appear busy.”

It’s worth noting that though men seem to want to appear busy, they aren’t always working. Indeed, research has shown how men (vs. women) may more effectively alter “the structure of their work in an unobtrusive, under-the-radar way” to appear busier than they actually are.?This research even highlighted a male manager who skied 5 days in a row with his son, all on workdays, and still maintained a reputation as a rising, and busy, star among the firm’s leadership.?Women, in contrast, seemed to face higher scrutiny on their time and if “they left the office at 5” people assumed they weren’t working any longer.?

Women are more likely to be asked to do unwanted tasks, even when they are busy????????????????????????????????????????????????

There is a strong body of research that shows that people, both men and women, are more comfortable asking women to do “non-promotable tasks” than they are asking men.?This finding is supported by research in the academic setting , with female faculty overwhelmed with “non-promotable tasks” at higher rates.?The research demonstrated that women are ~50% more likely to be assigned and ~50% more likely to volunteer for unwanted tasks.

In our own study, while people generally say that being perceived as busy stops others from reaching out for help or to meet with them (including for unwanted tasks), this was less true for women.

Approximately 45% of women said that their busyness did not prevent others from reaching out to do unwanted tasks, whereas only 25% of men said the same. We find, similarly, regardless of their busyness, women were also more likely to be asked for help or “to meet” than men.

These results nearly mirror those of Babcock’s study : someone was assigned the role of “manager” and then picked one person from a randomly assigned group to perform a task that would benefit everyone in the group but benefit the chosen person the least?Regardless of the manager’s gender or make-up of the group, women received ~44% more requests than their male counterparts.

Together, our results suggest that women worry more about appearing unavailable and therefore might not signal their busyness as effectively as men. In turn, this could increase how often women are asked to do non-promotable tasks and amplify even further the likelihood of negative physical/mental health conditions or even burn-out.

Employees play the busy game, employers aren’t always stopping them, and the rules are broken

If there’s one simple takeaway: employees spend significant time managing their actual busyness (i.e., hours worked) and their perceptions of busyness (i.e, how others view them); employers (at least in the eyes of employees) seem to do very little to alter this dynamic.

If we reflect on the data:

·????????95% of this group self-identifies as ‘busy’; with over 70% working 50+ hours

·????????Managers feel especially busy and 98% of mangers believe others perceive them as busy

·????????Men and women both regularly contemplate their own ‘busy signals’ (whether hiding busyness, promoting their busyness, etc.)

The costs to business – real, projected and perceived – are substantial:

·????????People have real fears about the personal mental health costs of hiding busyness

o??“If I suck it up and pretend everything is fine, that might be good in the short run but come at the cost of getting the help and support I need from colleagues friends and family” (Male, 1st-Year Consultant)

·????????Junior people might sense being overwhelmed is something wrong with them; younger people in organizations may be more prone to hide busyness, at a moment in their career where they could benefit from additional prioritization coaching

o??“[I feel like a battery] with a finite amount of energy that could be thrown away when burnt out. I don't see how you survive at this job without hiding how busy you are because the second things slow down, managers or partners find new work for you” (Male, 1st-year Consultant)

• And at a macro level, these busyness games chip away at psychological safety on teams, and overall company culture
• “Our work culture insists on being frantic” (Male, 1st-year Consultant)

Taking action: moving to “ban busy”

I make it seem like I spend more time on my hobbies than I do to make it seem like I have a life outside of work, but really I’m too busy to spend as much time on my hobbies as I would like (Female, 2nd-year Associate)

1. Set boundaries and lead by example from the top

Per usual, it starts with leaders: if company leadership stops using busy vernacular and halts the ‘busy game’ (signals, performance biases, etc.) we can go a long way quickly.?

We encourage leaders to promote objective conversations about workload and distribution of responsibilities.?We also urge leaders to be vulnerable: share your own ‘overwhelming moments’, your approach for dealing with busyness, the own ‘games you played’ as you rose through the ranks.?

Lastly, it’s critical to actually demonstrate real work-life harmony as an executive.?Be the CEO that leaves when their work is done; take your vacation and encourages others to do the same. ?

2. Redefine the ‘ideal employee’ – output over hours

In parallel, company leadership must rethink the model citizen in their organization.?We encourage you to focus on output/outcomes rather than hours worked?(more directly, STOP using hours as a benchmark ).

Support your managers and teams to focus on the stuff that really matters and promote a culture of push-back to identify things that don’t (more directly, ALLOW people to say ‘no’ to non-essential work).?We urge leadership teams to “swap productivity paranoia for helpful prioritization .

To get teams focused on output over hours, you also have to normalize asking for help – and supporting people of all backgrounds to do so (note: a previous study found that, for example women were less likely to ask for deadline extensions than men).

3. Establish the ‘tactical rules’ to signal availability in your organization

I think a lot of people like to seem busier than they actually are. In today’s society, being busy is a badge of honor (Female, 2nd-year Consultant)

The written (and unwritten) rules matter -and if you encourage teams to use them, you’ll go a long way in combating busy signals.?A few we’ve seen work well:

·????????Intentionally set your notifications off/on via slack or teams; do the same for your cell phone (non-disturb); don’t think your bubble always needs to ‘go green’

·????????Define your regular ‘working hours/online time’ vs. your ‘you time’ (gym, appointments, partner-time, etc.).?Set calendar blocks to reflect this to your teams and RESPECT these blocks mutually

·????????Establish “rules” for after-hours responses and expected response time to emails, slacks;?additionally, explaining/making explicit to the recipient why an email or request came late AND what is needed from them can go a long way (this last step might prevent you from sending the late email in the first place, if nothing is truly urgent)

4. Surface opportunities broadly and equitably regardless of perceived busyness of employees; if they are optional, make them really optional

It’s essential that people still have agency to make their own decisions. Take, for example, one colleague’s experience: She’s faced situations where a colleague will assume she’s too busy for a new (and even exciting) opportunity and apologize when they do present it to her. “In the most extreme case, they’ll worry they’ve asked for too much too often, and not even consider me in the first place.” Man or woman, each individual person should make the call about whether they are too busy to do something or not.

The next step is critical: for opportunities that are considered “non- promotable work” and have “no impact on your performance review or promotion decision”, it must be the truth and people must believe it. Practically, this means on a promotion committee or review form, these tasks should not hold any weight and shouldn’t be discussed or considered. These policies should be explicitly written down and sent to employees; employees should also be repeatedly reminded of these policies.?Our previous research suggests that formal policies can reduce ambiguity and perceived impression management costs that primarily hurt women and junior employees.

The author team Adriann Negreros Milo Tamayo and Julia Dhar wishes to thank Ashley Whillans and Grant Donnelly for their collaboration and insights in preparing this article.

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