Maybe... or they are using metrics from above as drivers.

To create and monitor Jira ticket counts, there has the be Jira tickets for management to pay attention to and compare against other employees.

Maybe the employee is gaming the numbers... but there has to be a game to play - and this no different than basing performance reviews on bugs solved or LOC numbers.

management is probably looking at those numbers? Going to be people who change their focus to reflect that attention from above.