Business operations concept · updated August 9, 2026
Approval Fatigue
Approval fatigue is the tendency to approve requests with less scrutiny as their volume increases, driven by review capacity rather than genuine confidence.
Example
An approver who reviewed the first five expense requests of the day carefully starts rubber-stamping the fifteenth without really reading it.
Why it matters
Recognizing fatigue as a capacity problem, not a discipline problem, points toward the real fix: raising a pre-approval threshold or adding another reviewer.
Limits and cautions
Removing an approval step to relieve fatigue can just move risk elsewhere if the underlying volume of genuinely risky requests hasn't actually changed.
Relevance to Stelaah
Stelaah's approval workflows can route low-risk requests through a pre-approved boundary, keeping full review capacity for the ones that need it.
This connection describes product intent, not a guarantee that every plan or workflow supports every related capability.