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Simbarashe Masara
Post Correspondent
Chronic busyness has hurt many businesses and has also led to many organisational problems.
Busyness is the term used in the workplace to describe the situation whereby employees are ever busy during their tasks.
This can be an illusion to many leaders as too much activity on the work does not really translate to productivity.
Employees can be seen running around all day but it must be noted that the end result is all that matters.
Business leaders can be misled by this idea of busyness and award these employees and also promote them on the basis that they are very active at work.
This creates problems and more incompetence within the organisation.
The leaders will prompt the employees to follow the idea of busyness and create a culture of looking busy instead of being productive.
This prompts employees to try so hard to be very active in the workplace so that they can be noticed and be promoted.
Employees on computers can pretend to focus on the computer to create a sense of seriousness and in meetings, employees tend to pretend to listen attentively.
The activity, which does not generate income, also does not align with any company’s vision or mission, does not add to the flow of goods and services.
The busyness ideology must therefore be rooted out in all organisations.
The focus is mainly on finishing as many tasks as possible, rather than strategically and thoroughly doing their tasks.
Instead of being productive, these active employees will be busy talking about how busy they are and how many hours they have spent on tasks.
Such employees might also become too busy to even concentrate on their given tasks as they have many priorities and are focused on finishing as many tasks as possible.
These employees are perfectly suited in a mechanical environment which doesn’t require much critical thinking and problems solving skills.
Hard work is their priority and not smart work and this becomes a problem in the workplace as this will stifle productivity.
A good example is that of a writer who can put in much work to write a book with three hundred pages but without much content.
On the other hand, a one-page book that has been well researched and strategically written can outshine and sell many copies.
This means productivity focuses on the end result, rather than more of the process.
The results can be achieved through proper planning and clarity of the task at hand.
These are traits of very productive people.
Employers in the modern day are now using psychometric tests in a bid to check the skills possessed by the prospective employee.
It has been established that face to face interviews cannot bring out these traits as someone can be a good speaker that cannot solve problems in the workplace.
Using these tests for assessment is clear proof that there are certain traits that are required for one to be very productive and busyness is certainly not one of them.
This means that being results oriented, creative, a good problem solver, a good time manager, a good planner, having the right tools at hand and being priority oriented brings out the employees’ productivity.
Clearly, the act of busyness without any productivity has a great negative impact on the organisation as the seeds of incompetence are sown that way.
Leaders should be on the lookout for busy people who are unproductive as they can spread this chronic ideology to other employees and affect productivity.
Online Reporter