Taskmasking: Why Gen-Zers like me are tricking our bosses with performative work

Forget presenteeism: there’s a new workplace trick on the block. As an office-based twentysomething, Ellie Muir understands the appeal of faking productivity (and getting your boss off your back) all too well

Taskmaskers can sometimes be spotted around the office deep in thought... about dinner plans (Getty/iStockphoto)

Am I working hard or hardly working? You be the judge: right now, I’m sitting at my desk, plugged into my AirPods and typing furiously. I’m frowning slightly, which would suggest that I’m concentrating particularly hard and am fully engrossed in my work. And maybe I am. But my boss would never know if I was secretly replying in my “girlies who brunch” group chat, listening to an audiobook or surfing online shopping sites instead. That’s because I could just as easily be “taskmasking” – a term coined for the workplace cheat-tool increasingly adopted by my generation, Gen Z, to fake productivity and appease our bosses.

According to a new report by Fortune, managers across different sectors have noticed that the youngest members of their workforces are more inclined to taskmask than older demographics. At first, I assumed this was yet another Gen Z-bashing tool to perpetuate the narrative that we are the “work-shy”, “anxious”, “snowflake” generation. But I can also understand why so many of us might be feigning productivity: we are often underpaid, overworked and expected to be constantly at the beck and call of senior colleagues who have fewer boundaries when it comes to working hours. Using a spare 15 minutes between tasks for ourselves – even if that’s doomscrolling or online browsing – can make us feel as though we’re claiming back the smallest amount of control over our working days. Looking busy while doing it is simply a clever management-deflecting tactic.

Faking busyness isn’t exclusive to desk-based activities, either. Taskmasking techniques could include decisively striding around the office while holding a laptop or appearing to have a heated discussion with a colleague about an upcoming project (when in fact you’re discussing the latest drama on Love is Blind). It’s clogging your calendar out with fake meetings (because who would dare question a Gen Z on the particularities of their “wellness catch-up” scheduled on Tuesday afternoons?). And there’s also the classic pacing back-and-forth while taking an urgent-looking phone call (but the chatter is actually about whether you’re having pizza or pasta for dinner).

Taskmasking is partly a reaction to mandates forcing employees to return to the office five days a week (JPMorgan, Amazon and Goldman Sachs have all done this recently). The scrapping of hybrid working and shift back to pre-pandemic culture suggests that companies believe flexible working models are a hindrance to productivity. But Gen Z graduates like me would disagree. We have had no choice but to achieve most of our professional milestones thus far from home – I did my second and third years of university from my bedroom – so we rarely buy into the idea that office presence translates into achievement or efficiency. In fact, only one in 10 Gen Z-ers want to work from the office full-time, according to a 2022 study from King’s College London. It also found that 40 per cent of those aged 16 to 24 preferred to put themselves forward for important tasks when working remotely rather than in-person, compared with 25 per cent of 25 to 49-year-olds. Just 13 per cent of those aged 50 and over agreed.

Abandoning work-from-home models means that employees are increasingly being micromanaged by their bosses, as teams spend more time in close proximity to one another. My friends and I agree that we feel more surveilled by the corporate overlords while in the office, and fewer of us feel like we’re able to leave our desks when we need a break. That’s when the desk-based scrolling and covert life admin happens. I’d also wager that Gen Z employees, due to their age and relative inexperience, are the most micromanaged cohort of all. Sometimes, taskmasking feels like the only escape.

Of course managers should be concerned about the causes behind the rise in taskmasking. Perhaps it suggests that employees are not sufficiently satisfied or stimulated at work, or that they need to build a better dialogue about realistic deadlines and schedules. But it’s worth asking ourselves whether taskmasking really harms output.

There’s proof that reducing the number of working hours actually increases employees’ productivity – one of the many reasons that people are increasingly backing the campaign for a four-day working week. In a 2023 study trialling the four-day working pattern across 61 companies, participants reported feeling less stressed and more positive about work. Unnecessary meetings were cut out of schedules and participants reported an improvement in their personal lives. It all suggests that employees don’t need to be working productively for a full eight or nine hours a day. In fact, a recent study showed that the average American worker is only productive for four hours and 36 minutes during an eight-hour shift – meaning that, each year, countless days are already lost to procrastination or pointless meetings.

Signs of taskmasking: headphones and a serious concentrating face (Getty)

Reclaiming brief chunks of time for yourself is harmless in the grand scheme of things. Taskmasking is arguably just one method by which Gen Z-ers are aiming to strike a better work-life balance. I recently investigated the viral five-to-nine trend, whereby young professionals are using the hours of 5am to 9am to make the most of their days before work and focus on their wellness, fitness or side hustles. It’s an attempt to reclaim their time – and their lives – back from their corporate jobs, in the quest for better harmony between the work versus the individual self. Remember, my generation are still learning to fit into the changing demands of the workplace. We are newbies here, after all.

I do have one disclaimer. If my boss, boss’s boss or their boss’s boss is reading this: as your grateful employee, just know that I would never really taskmask. I have far more important things to be getting on with. Like doing a few laps of the office while holding my laptop. Or taking an urgent call that’s absolutely not about whether to have pizza or pasta for dinner.