When AI Makes You Faster But Not Freer: How HR Should Respond To Fauxductivity

We were promised that AI would give people time back. Instead, many workers are doing more work in the same (or longer) days, performing busyness on top of genuine output, and feeling more drained than before, a pattern several recent studies now describe as an “AI productivity paradox.” As a senior HR leader, if you are not intentionally deciding what happens to the time freed up by AI, your culture will decide for you, and it will default to fauxductivity.

What “Fauxductivity” Really Means In 2026

Fauxductivity is the illusion of productivity: full calendars, full inboxes, constant responsiveness and activity, with surprisingly little meaningful progress against outcomes that matter. It is performative work meant to signal effort rather than create value, as described in multiple recent analyses of fake productivity at work. Packed meeting schedules with no decisions, over‑documenting simple tasks, and obsessively “being online” are now classic markers of fauxductivity, especially in hybrid and remote environments where visibility becomes a proxy for trust.

Workhuman’s global research on faux‑productivity, widely covered in outlets like HR Dive and Forbes, found that nearly four in ten managers and executives admit to faking activity at work, often more than their own teams. When leaders model fauxductivity as a survival strategy, they normalize it and quietly teach their teams that looking busy is safer than focusing on deep, outcome‑driven work.

The AI Productivity Paradox: More Output, Same Bottlenecks

AI has exponentially improved task‑level efficiency, but organizations have not redesigned work to absorb that efficiency in a healthy way. Asana’s research on the “AI super productivity paradox” shows that highly productive workers are saving significant hours per week with AI, yet report higher coordination overhead, fragmented focus, and heavier cognitive load as the work around them accelerates. Other analyses of AI and working hours suggest that only a minority of employees use AI‑saved time for rest or personal activities; most simply re‑invest it in more tasks as expectations quietly rise.

New research from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business echoes this finding, noting that AI often leads to work expanding to fill the time freed up, rather than workers enjoying genuinely reduced hours. In practice, AI is compressing more activity into the same day and erasing natural stopping points like lunch or commute time, which becomes a perfect breeding ground for fauxductivity: people look hyper‑engaged, dashboards show more output, but strategic thinking, recovery, and relationship‑building get squeezed out.

Are We Punishing People For Working Smarter?

Here is the uncomfortable question for HR: what happens to the employee who uses AI to take a 90‑minute task down to 15 minutes and then does not immediately refill the remaining 75 minutes with more visible work? Emerging commentary on the “AI productivity paradox” suggests that, in many cultures, that person is quietly penalized or viewed with suspicion. They are labeled “not hungry enough,” “too quiet,” or “not a team player,” while colleagues who fill the time with meetings and late‑night Slack activity are seen as more committed.

Workhuman’s data links fauxductivity directly to poor culture, burnout, and anxiety about being perceived as lazy if you are not always “on.” HR Executive and other HR outlets have gone so far as to frame fauxductivity as a symptom of deeper culture and burnout problems, not just individual bad habits. When leaders equate productivity with constant motion, employees who actually reduce friction and automate tasks end up punished with more work, more monitoring, or skepticism that they “must not be that busy,” which is a fast track to disengagement and a missed opportunity for genuine innovation.

My take as a senior HR leader is simple: if you do not explicitly celebrate job simplification, automation, and boundary‑setting as success, employees will keep those wins underground or stop pursuing them at all.

Why HR Must Own The “Time Dividend”

Every technological wave creates a tipping point where early adopters are significantly more productive while others cling to old workflows. In the fauxductivity conversation, several commentators have pointed out that this tension is not new; what is new is the speed and scale of AI’s impact across roles and levels. With generative AI, the gap between those who redesign their work and those who cling to visibility habits can emerge in months, not years, and be visible all the way to the C‑suite.

HR cannot stay neutral here. If we treat AI solely as a tools conversation, we miss the structural issue: where does the time dividend go? HR’s responsibility is to define what “good” looks like when work gets faster, protect employees from quiet escalation of expectations, and redesign roles and workflows so efficiency gains translate into better work and healthier humans, not just more noise.

How AI Fuels New Forms Of Fauxductivity

AI itself can become a tool of fauxductivity in several ways that are starting to show up in case studies and commentary:

• Volume over value. Employees generate multiple drafts, decks, and reports “because it’s easy,” flooding decision‑makers with artifacts that look impressive but add little clarity.

• Always‑on experimentation. Teams run AI agents in the background during meetings and off‑hours, dissolving natural stopping points and making it look like work never ends.

• Metrics inflation. Activity measures spike (emails sent, documents created, tickets updated), but impact metrics do not move in parallel, confusing performance evaluation and encouraging leaders to chase the wrong signals.

From a distance, this looks like a highly engaged, AI‑powered workforce. Up close, it is a culture sliding into AI‑accelerated fauxductivity: lots of motion, shallow progress, and growing burnout.

Signals HR Should Watch

As an HR leader, you should be hypersensitive to patterns that indicate AI is amplifying fauxductivity rather than real productivity. Multiple articles aimed at HR leaders call out similar red flags:

• Calendars where “AI‑enhanced working sessions” and recurring check‑ins dominate, but projects still miss decision milestones or stall at the same points.

• Teams that obsess over responsiveness, status updates, and online indicators, while customer outcomes or strategic initiatives lag.

• Leaders who talk constantly about how “slammed” they are while admitting, in surveys or confidential conversations, to padding visibility or faking activity because they feel watched.

• Employees reporting more cognitive fatigue and less control over their time despite using AI to save hours each week.

Fauxductivity is not a character flaw; it is a systems outcome. The emerging consensus across HR publications is that leaders should treat it like a culture problem and a design problem, not a morality play.

What HR Should Do With The Time AI Creates

Here is where I want HR to get much bolder. When AI makes work faster, we should actively script what happens next instead of leaving it to chance.

Redefine productivity in outcome terms

Move away from hour‑ and visibility‑based expectations, especially in hybrid roles, and define success by clear, role‑specific outcomes. Many analysts writing about fauxductivity recommend shifting measurement from “time at desk” to outcomes and value delivered. In your performance frameworks, explicitly distinguish between activity metrics (emails, meetings, tickets) and value metrics (customer retention, cycle time reduction, quality improvements).

Architect “time dividends” into roles

When a process is automated or accelerated by AI, decide upfront how the reclaimed time will be used: deeper customer discovery, innovation projects, mentoring, cross‑training, or rest and recovery. Treat this as job redesign, not informal “extra capacity.” If you do not codify it in job expectations, team norms, and workload planning, the time will be quietly recaptured by the system.

Legitimize rest and cognitive recovery

Workhuman’s research, along with coverage in HR Executive and Allwork, links fauxductivity to burnout, stress, and a sense of meaninglessness at work. HR can connect wellbeing directly to performance in leadership narratives and build guardrails such as meeting‑free blocks, norms against after‑hours communication, and policies that protect breaks so AI‑enabled speed does not become 24/7 accessibility.

Celebrate “working yourself out of work”

Several of the fauxductivity articles aimed at HR and staffing leaders argue that organizations should recognize employees who reduce manual work and simplify complex processes, rather than quietly punishing them with more work. Create recognition mechanisms for employees who use AI and other tools to eliminate waste, and spotlight these stories in town halls: “Here’s how this team cut 40 percent of a process and used that time to improve customer experience,” not “Here’s how we did the same work faster and just piled on more.”

Equip managers to distinguish real work from performance

Guidance from People Management, HR Executive, and other outlets emphasizes that managers must learn to assess impact, learning, and problem‑solving rather than equating presence with performance. Give your leaders simple diagnostic questions: What changed because of this work? What decision moved? What risk decreased? If they cannot answer, it might be fauxductivity dressed up as effort.

An AI + Fauxductivity Conversation Guide For Leaders

HR can arm managers with a practical script so they do not unintentionally punish people for using AI well. Drawing on the themes raised in fauxductivity research and my own leadership experience, here is a simple conversation guide:

• Start with curiosity: “I see you’ve automated parts of this process. Walk me through what that freed up for you.”

• Anchor in outcomes: “Given the time you’re saving, what higher‑value work should we prioritize together?”

• Normalize boundaries: “I do not need you to refill your calendar just to look busy. I care that our key outcomes move.”

• Co‑design safeguards: “How do we protect some of that freed time for deep work or recovery so we do not just turn AI into more noise?”

These are the conversations that convert AI efficiency into sustainable performance instead of AI‑powered fauxductivity.

The Leadership Standard: Don’t Confuse Motion With Progress

The data is clear: leaders are often the biggest contributors to fauxductivity, especially in AI‑intense, hybrid environments. That means HR has both an opening and an obligation to reset the standard.​

If AI is making your organization faster but not freer, you do not have a tools problem; you have a design problem. The question for HR is not “How do we get people to do more with AI?” It is “How do we ensure the time we free is invested in better work and better wellbeing, not more performance theater?”​

That is the line between an AI‑enabled organization and an AI‑exhausted one. HR sits right at that line.​

Fauxductivity Audit: Put This Into Practice

If you’re wondering where fauxductivity might be hiding in your organization, use the checklist below with your executive team, HRBPs, or people managers. You don’t need to tackle everything at once—start by circling two or three “yes” answers as your first focus areas.

1. Meetings

Ask yourself:

• Do we have recurring meetings where the purpose isn’t clear to everyone in the invite?

• Do some meetings happen out of habit, with no specific owner accountable for decisions or follow‑up?

• Are we using live meetings to share updates that could be handled asynchronously?

• Have we added new “AI updates” or status meetings without removing any older ones?

If you’re seeing a pattern of “we meet a lot, but decide very little,” you’re likely funding fauxductivity with people’s time.

2. Communication & “Visibility”

Look at how people stay visible:

• Are employees praised more for fast responses than for thoughtful, high‑impact work?

• Do people keep Slack/Teams/email open all day because they’re worried about appearing “offline”?

• Are leaders sending late‑night or weekend messages that quietly set an “always on” expectation?

High volumes of reactive communication often signal performance theater, not real productivity.

3. Reports, Dashboards, and AI‑Generated Artifacts

Audit the outputs:

• Have we created more reports and dashboards in the last year than we’ve retired?

• Are teams producing decks, summaries, or AI‑generated documents that very few people actually read?

• Do leaders still say, “I don’t have real insight,” despite the volume of reporting?

If AI is helping you create more artifacts but not better decisions, that’s fauxductivity in action. 

4. Metrics and Goals

Check what you measure:

• Are any key roles still judged primarily on hours online, hours in the office, or number of meetings attended?

• Do people feel they have to “do it all” because the outcomes that matter most are not clear?

• Are performance conversations focused more on activity (“what you did”) than on impact (“what changed”)?

Activity‑heavy scorecards almost always drive more busyness than business value.

5. Use of AI

Examine how AI is framed:

• When we roll out AI tools, do we clearly say which low‑value tasks they should replace?

• Do we explicitly name what higher‑value work should fill the freed‑up time (e.g., coaching, design, problem‑solving)?

• Are teams mainly using AI to produce more content (emails, decks, docs) rather than to simplify or stop certain work altogether?

If AI is just helping you generate more of the same, you’re missing the real time dividend.

6. Leadership Behaviors

Finally, look at the top:

• Do leaders regularly model declining unnecessary meetings and blocking focus time on their calendars?

• Do they turn off notifications during deep work and talk about it openly with their teams?

• Are leaders willing to say, “We’re going to stop doing X,” not just “We’re going to add Y”?

• Do they distinguish clearly between looking busy and driving outcomes in their language and recognition?

Where leaders model fauxductivity, it spreads. Where they model focus and impact, that spreads too.

Want this as a printable one‑pager you can take into your next leadership meeting? Download the branded Fauxductivity Audit Checklist as a PDF here.

If You’re An HR Or People Leader, Your Next Steps

If this surfaced a few hard truths, that’s a good sign.

• Bring this checklist to your next leadership or ops meeting and identify 2–3 items you’ll address this quarter.

• Use it as a coaching tool with managers who are struggling to distinguish real work from performance theater.

• Share back what you learn. I’m actively collecting examples of how HR teams are reclaiming AI‑created time for better work, not just more work.

Sources for further reading

• Workhuman, “Is the Faux‑Productivity Problem Real or Imagined?”

• HR Dive, “Almost 4 in 10 leaders admit to ‘fauxductivity,’ Workhuman finds”

• Forbes, “Fauxductivity: Why Your Boss Might Be Faking Productivity”

• Dahl Consulting, “‘Fauxductivity’: What It Is & How to Fix It”

• HR Executive, “Fauxductivity: A symptom of culture, burnout problems”

• Allwork, “Fauxductivity: The Workplace Illusion Leaders Must Confront to Succeed”