Is there any situation in which shirking—avoiding work or ‘taking it easy’ while on the job—is good for productivity? The obvious answer is ‘No.’ The more complete answer is “Maybe.”
In any moderately-sized organization, employers worry about shirking—slacking off while on the job, absenteeism, daydreaming, net surfing, and other activities that reduce productivity during ‘work time.’ Shirking, by most accounts, lowers output and raises costs. But monitoring employee behavior is difficult; time spent is not a good proxy for output, and measuring job performance requires clear criteria, and costs institutional resources. The intuitive assumption is that less shirking means greater output. Behavioral economists tend to look at incentives, and ask: “What factors cause people to be most productive?”
The most obvious answer to the productivity question is: compensation. Compensation naturally focuses on money pay, and there are extended debates among economists over what wage rate will most effectively discourage shirking in different settings.
As we know from job experience, however, money compensation is not total compensation. Health and retirement benefits add significantly to employee ‘pay.’ In addition, there are important non-monetary considerations that influence people’s choices when they decide to enter the job market, or to accept an offer of work. These include job location, physical working environment, degree of autonomy and authority, and many other job-specific elements. Potential employees weigh these job quality factors together with explicit money compensation, since they all contribute to ‘pay’ and to job satisfaction. More satisfied employees are presumably more productive employees.
Another form of potential payment is—perhaps surprisingly—the ability to shirk (and get away with it). The argument that shirking is a form of compensation is not the same as a recommendation to begin missing work days, nor does it apply to all types of work.
‘Piece’ workers—farm laborers and factory seamstresses paid by the unit produced, for example—and employees with minimum compensation guaranteed by contract—baseball players and other athletes—have employment situations in which shirking has serious negative consequences. Piece workers suffer an income loss if productivity drops, so shirking exacts a price upon the shirker. Long-term contracts that guarantee payment regardless of performance—as exist in professional athletics—might have more difficulty with the incentive to shirk. Whether in piece work or professional sports, however, shirking almost certainly reduces performance and productivity—the expected result in these cases.
In some jobs, however, behavioral economists argue that shirking may increase worker productivity. This occurs in situations where employees view the (selective) ability to shirk as an important job benefit, one for which they are willing to trade away the higher wages they would otherwise seek.
Often these are highly skilled professionals, whose jobs demand a great deal of personal responsibility, creativity, and/or autonomy. Examples include legal and medical professionals, academics, performers, or political or corporate executives. For this group, short work weeks, long lunches, or other ‘shirking’ opportunities increase job satisfaction, tend to reduce the principal-agent problem, and provide lower-cost alternatives to higher salaries or lower productivity. It seems counterintuitive, but, research suggests that these employees perform best when they are (sometimes) shirkers as well as workers.
Of course, it’s possible that shirking just means slacking off. It’s not a settled discussion. In some situations, though, shirking seems to make dollars and cents.