HARDLY WORKING: Majority of Gen Z employees admit to 'faking productivity' on the job



It seems a lot of people are pretending to do more work than they actually do.

While performance art at work comes in many different forms and happens for different reasons, one generation is actually outperforming the others in its efforts to not work: Gen Z.

'The average worker fakes about five hours per week.'

Con job

In a survey of full-time American professionals, employees have found remarkable ways to fake productivity.

Shockingly, 66% of employees admitted to faking productivity at work, and 73% of managers said they do it as well.

Gen Z has a particular affinity for it, however, outperforming older generations by 12 points when it comes to slacking off. A whopping 80% of them said they are faking productivity, while Millennials came in at 68% and Gen X at 58%.

The study from Software Finder also revealed some wild tactics employees are taking to make it seem as though they are actually working when they are not.

RELATED: Gen Z should not pay for Social Security

MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

Cat and mouse

The top two methods employees are using to fake work are "moving the mouse periodically" and "keeping a doc or browser tab open"; 56% of respondents said they use those tactics.

Another method used by 43% of full-time workers was purposely responding to non-urgent messages at a slower rate, or "slow-responding."

More than a third of employees said they would log in to a tool they aren't using, while about a quarter of respondents said they would send a strategic message on work apps like Slack or Teams to make it seem as if they were working.

Another 22% said they scheduled emails for later in the day.

All this fake work adds up to a massive amount of time burned over the course of the year. Specifically, the survey stated that the average worker fakes about five hours per week making it seem as though they are working. Multiplied over a year, that's 260 hours, and when divided by an eight-hour work day, that's more than 32 full days of work lost.

However, it may not be the employees' fault.

RELATED: The GOP is blowing it with young men

Showing up

More than half of respondents said they finished their work at least an hour before the day actually ends, so the rest is lip service.

Who are they faking it for? More than a third said their direct manager, while another 31% said "no one in particular."

The latter is indicative of a trend of not working for the sake of it, as 27% of workers said they were faking productivity because of "general workplace culture."

The next leading reason was due to their managers, who "measure presence over output."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

DEI hustlers lash out after Trump official solicits discrimination complaints from white men



In his damning Dec. 15 article in Compact magazine titled "The Lost Generation," Los Angeles-based writer Jacob Savage detailed the disenfranchisement of white male Millennials and their systematic exclusion from various industries, especially academia, entertainment, medicine, the news media, and tech.

While America has long been reckoning with the fallout of the DEI war on meritocracy, Savage's viral article — which journalist Matt Taibbi indicated was initially accepted by the Atlantic on the condition that it avoid making the bigger societal point — crystallized for many, with the help of statistics and personal accounts, the extent and true impact of that racist campaign.

'This was an injustice, plain and simple.'

After Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the article and the discrimination discussed therein, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairwoman Andrea Lucas released a video on social media imploring white men to seek damages — a video that Vance subsequently shared.

"Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws," said Lucas, a Republican critic of DEI and mother of two who was appointed to lead the EEOC by President Donald Trump in January.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to probe and litigate against private companies for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination.

RELATED: 'Enough white guys already': The war on white men because of DEI in the working world exposed in damning report

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Image

Lucas, who previously noted that Savage's article told "a story chock full of unlawful discrimination," said in the video that it was imperative that those keen on taking action contact the EEOC as soon as possible, as "time limits are typically strict for filing a claim."

The EEOC chairwoman also noted in a follow-up message, "You may have waived your right to money, but you still have the right to blow the whistle and participate in the EEOC process — and EEOC can sue on behalf of a class."

— (@)

Lucas has made no secret of her contempt for DEI.

In a May 2024 speech — nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard/UNC, banning race-based college admission — Lucas stated:

Race or sex cannot be even a plus factor, a tiebreaker, or a tipping point in the employment context. People sometimes think that race or sex can be part of the equation for an employment decision if race or sex is not the sole factor, the exclusive factor, or the deciding factor. That is dead wrong. If race or sex was all or part of an employer's motivation, that violates federal employment law.

She noted during the Q&A following her remarks that "many employers, by doing lazy, high-level virtue signaling, paint-by-numbers DEI, have mass discrimination."

Proponents of the DEI regime were evidently prickled by Lucas' latest remarks.

David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, told the Associated Press that Lucas' recent posts demonstrate a "fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is."

"It's really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you're bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups," Glasgow said. "If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn't really been doing a very good job at achieving that."

RELATED: Trump takes a wrecking ball to the woke campus economy

Photo by Tom Brenner-Pool/Getty Image

Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chairwoman who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, similarly complained, suggesting it was "problematic" for Lucas to speak out about the disenfranchisement of white men.

"It suggests some sort of priority treatment," said Yang, who served as deputy assistant to former President Joe Biden for so-called racial justice and equity. "That's not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all."

Hours ahead of Lucas sharing her video to social media, Vice President JD Vance noted on X that Savage's article was "an incredible piece that describes the evil of DEI and its consequences."

"A lot of people think DEI is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at NFL games," Vance wrote. "In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men."

"This is why the Trump administration has so dedicated itself to eradicating racist discrimination. We've eliminated funding for DEI, required government grantees to certify that they're not engaged in DEI, fired a number of DEI employees, and asked the great [Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon] to aggressively prosecute all forms of racial discrimination," the vice president continued. "For too many Democrat leaders, racial discrimination was bad unless it targeted white men. This was an injustice, plain and simple."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Thanks To Neil Gorsuch, The Biden Administration Is Forcing Employers Everywhere To End Free Speech And Put Men In Women’s Bathrooms

Thanks to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, the EEOC has declared war on people who hold traditional views on sex, women who value their safety and privacy, and people who simply believe in science.

‘Former Staff’ Of Katie Hill Hack Old Twitter Account, Call Out Hollywood Biopic On Their ‘Abusive’ Former Boss

Anonymous 'former staff' called their story one of 'workplace abuse and harassment,' sending a message to Hollywood executives that 'Katie Hill is not a hero for women.'