Why busywork is fooling leaders

In 2025, Cambridge Dictionary added "mouse jiggler" to its lexicon, reflecting a growing trend of employees using tools or software to simulate activity and appear productive when not actively working. This phenomenon highlights a broader cultural issue where professionals feel pressured to constantly seem busy, often resorting to superficial displays of effort rather than focusing on impactful output. The author, a business owner, views this less as employee deception and more as a symptom of organizational measurement failures. The core problem lies not in the effort employees exert, but in the metrics organizations choose to track, which can inadvertently reward activity over genuine productivity.

The ingrained value placed on "face time"—simply being present in the workplace—contributes to this issue. Research indicates that leaders often perceive employees who are passively observed at work as more dependable and committed. Many organizations continue to rely on outdated performance indicators such as hours logged, meetings attended, and emails sent, which are modern equivalents of "face time." These metrics are frequently applied uniformly across all employees, disregarding the diverse functions and objectives of different roles within the company. This approach fails to acknowledge that different teams and individuals have unique responsibilities and success criteria.

At Jotform, the author's company, a different approach is taken. Employees are organized into cross-functional teams, each responsible for setting its own mission-based objectives on a quarterly basis, operating akin to independent "mini-companies." While the company encourages employees to work from the office most of the time, citing benefits for collaboration and learning, the emphasis is on measuring impact rather than mere activity. This strategic shift aims to redefine productivity by focusing on tangible outcomes and valuable contributions, moving away from the superficial metrics that can be easily manipulated by tools like mouse jigglers.