Companies across the spectrum from Tesla to small local digital agencies are groping with big decisions over whether and to what degree to embrace remote work. During Covid, we had no choice. But now, employers have some leverage to determine their workplace model. Though perhaps not as much leverage as they would like. Or believe they should have.

Many companies have tried to lay down the law and demand workers return to the office. Only to face a revolt. And often when there is a revolt, the best workers leave, leaving bosses with an office (real or virtual) filled with B-players.

There are also generational considerations. Many older workers find work from home helps them manage childcare and/or eldercare more easily. Meanwhile, many younger workers feel confident insisting, in a tight labor market, on a work-from-home option. This even as business gurus like Scott Galloway implore younger knowledge workers to get themselves into the office. Why? To learn from and build relationships with those in positions to mentor and/or promote them.

Now for every Elon Musk who essentially calls work from homers scam artists, there is a Marc Benioff embracing a permanent WFH culture.

Digital Presenteeism

With all this disagreement over WFH, there are some surprising consistencies in workplace behavior that transcend the office vs home debate. We know that throughout history workers have wasted time on “presenteeism”. This is the habit of engaging in activities designed to demonstrate that you are working.

Traditional presenteeism involves staying at your desk when the boss is around just so they can see you tapping away on a keyboard. A new study, “Killing Time at Work”, from Qatalog and Gitlab finds that presenteeism is alive and well in digital form. The study featured interviews with 2,000 knowledge workers in the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to the study, remote workers spend about 5 hours a week engaging in digital presenteeism. More than half (54%) of the knowledge workers surveyed for the report said they felt pressure to “show colleagues and managers that they are online and working during certain times of the day.”

So the culture of face time is alive and well online. It just takes different forms. For example, workers fear they will be seen as slacking off if they don’t set their Slack to show they are active. They also make sure to reply during regular office hours to emails, comment threads, and so on. Even if an asynchronous response would still get the job done. Tossing in the odd emoji on a Slack thread to show you’re engaged is another example of digital presenteeism.

Asynchronous Privilege

That all sounds pretty benign. But the report shines a light on something it calls “asynchronous privilege.” This is where the right to work asynchronously is reserved for those in leadership who are less accountable for not having their Slack set to active from 9 to 5.

According to the study, about three-quarters (74%) of C-suite execs said they work asynchronously ‘often’ or ‘always’. By comparison, 48% of VPs and directors did so. t or Director level. Among managers and consultants, it was 32%. And among those with an analyst title or anyone in an admin role, it was just 24%.

“C-Suite execs know they can work on their own schedule, without fear of questions from their team. That’s why we’ve seen this new system of privilege emerge, where senior staff feel empowered to work asynchronously, while not extending the same freedom and flexibility to their team members,” said Qatalog CEO Tariq Rauf. “There’s no excuse for such an enormous disparity, and business leaders need to make much more effort to build a culture and provide the tools that enable asynchronous work for all.”

Getting Over the Time Clock Mentality

Isn’t the ability to work asynchronously one of the major points of WFH? Having this “face time” culture linger in a remote work environment feels a bit self-defeating. Yet what’s more human than the fear of being branded a laggard? So none of this is surprising.

“Presenteeism was never a great way to measure the results of a business. In the post-pandemic world, with the rise of remote and distributed teams, there’s no such thing as showing up or clocking out,” said Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab.

“Work can happen as the sun turns, and the best leaders will reward results over hours. You do that by giving people agency and autonomy by default and coaching the skills to achieve their goals. This paradigm shift will define the workplace of the future.”