Key Highlights
- That’s not exactly taking hours away from a day on the job, but workplace experts say it’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg on the larger issue of so-called "office freeloading."Here’s a closer look at the issue of workplace shirking: what it means, how pervasive the problem is, and what team members and management can do to solve it. The office freeloader definedWhile the term "freeloader" may be a loaded one, there’s no doubt such workers exist.“From an employment-law and workplace-culture standpoint, an 'office freeloader' is someone who consistently avoids meaningful work while benefiting from the efforts of others, often positioning themselves to receive undue credit,” said Edward Hones, owner of Hones Law, a Seattle-based employment services law firm. Some behavioral experts view an office freeloader less as a cartoon villain and more as someone who has shifted into survival mode at work.“They’re doing just enough to stay out of trouble while avoiding real ownership of outcomes, which is often evidenced in a kind of strategic vagueness that makes it hard to pin down what they are actually contributing,” said Jon Rosenberg, professor and positive psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. On the surface, it might look like laziness, but much more lies underneath, Rosenberg noted.
- “There’s often a belief that their effort will not matter or will not be fairly recognized, and once people stop believing their choices have impact, they start conserving energy instead of offering it,” he said. Fair or unfair to the worker, that scenario becomes a real problem not only because some work simply doesn’t get done, but because everyone around them has to overfunction to compensate.
- “That breeds resentment and erodes trust,” Rosenberg said.
- “So yes, freeloading is a performance problem, but it is also a signal that something in the system is undermining agency, and if leaders can address those conditions directly, most people will move back toward a more engaged way of working.”Recognizing the habits of an office freeloaderA new study from Resume Now examines the red flags associated with what researchers call "ghostworking." In the report, 58% of carer professionals admit to “regularly pretending to be working,” while another 34% say they do so occasionally. It’s the regular offenders that worry management and co-workers, but the study shows some warning signs that single out office freeloading, if you look hard enough. According to the study:23% of employees admit to walking around the office with a notebook to look busy22% have typed randomly to appear engaged15% have held a phone to their ear with no real call15% have kept a spreadsheet open while browsing unrelated content12% have scheduled fake meetings to avoid real workHones noted that hybrid and remote environments can make this behavior even more complicated to detect because visibility is reduced and outputs are sometimes blended within collaborative tools.“These employees often shirk tasks by appearing 'busy' on digital platforms, delaying deliverables, or quietly relying on teammates to fill in gaps,” Hones said.
- “The biggest red flags I’ve seen include chronic missed deadlines, vague explanatio.
