Busy Work - Business and Work Settings

Business and Work Settings

In business and work settings, people may engage in busy work simply to appear like they're being busy and productive, with the primary goal of actually simply maintaining an appearance of activity in efforts to protect their employment status (i.e. to avoid termination or sanctions). Maintaining very high levels of constant busyness may actually be detrimental to the operations of a business or organization, in which new tasks are not undertaken in a timely manner due to workers already being in a state of continuously being very busy. This can also lead to workers taking shortcuts to accomplish tasks more quickly, which can negatively affect the quality of work results. Busy work also can be counterproductive in work settings because it may not be aligned with the overall objectives and priorities of an organization's plans for attaining and maintaining success in its ventures.