A new report published by Wrike called 'Dark Matter of Work: The Hidden Cost of Work Complexities', has found that what it calls 'knowledge workers' wasted time amounted to the equivalent of 89 days per annum due to work complexities created by the digital era, which ultimately cost businesses around £50 million per annum in losses arising as a result of inefficiencies.
At a time when businesses need to become more productive due to labour shortages, high inflation, and the economic downturn, the problem of wasted time needs to be urgently addressed
Wasted Time
The report states that the digital era has led to a proliferation of data and apps, which has in turn created new 'work complexities' in which 55% of vital information is no longer visible to businesses and their key decision makers. As the information is not immediately visible when it is required, projects end up being delayed or even cancelled altogether. Moreover, employees end up expending wasted time on duplication, searching for information, obtaining updates that could otherwise have been avoided had the information been readily available, and in unproductive meetings (with knowledge workers spending the equivalent of 18 working days a year just in meetings).
According to the report: "This Dark Matter of Work lives in synchronous applications and unstructured work, such as instant message threads and video calls, as well as the gaps between systems and applications that aren’t integrated. Without a single work platform in place that is powerful and versatile enough to track, manage, action, and align all work to goals across an organization, there exists a dangerously low level of visibility amongst knowledge workers and leaders."
The problems caused by wasted time were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the move to home and hybrid working. On average, knowledge workers are now using 14 different applications (up 9 since the start of the pandemic, on account of employers having to "adopt new communication and collaboration tools to support remote and hybrid working" according to the report), of which it is not possible to integrate 49% of them. Hence, the information contained on those apps that cannot be integrated is invisible to key decision makers.
A measure of the chaos caused by these new digital work complexities, is that 78% of knowledge workers report that they have at some point ended up working at cross purposes with their work colleagues due to the breakdown in communications caused by the fact that vital information is not always visible.
The solution is to ensure that all apps that are used within the business can be integrated into a single work platform, with 94% of knowledge workers confirming that this "would reduce stress in their teams." With this in mind, 86% of those 2800 businesses canvassed for the report said they were looking to "invest in tools, such as artificial intelligence and workflow automation, to create a single source of truth for work in their enterprise."
At present, Wrike estimate that the wasted time caused by these new work complexities, the invisible information, and the lack of app integration into a single work platform, is costing businesses around £50 million per annum.
Reaction
Commenting on the scale of the problems caused by wasted time and the work complexities identified, the VP of Product at Wrike, Alexey Korotich, stated: "Left unchecked, the Dark Matter of Work has the potential to devastate organizations."
Wrike Founder, Andrew Filev, added: "Only through work management software can organizations bring all work into one place. Teams get a holistic view of projects in play and can work as one, and business leaders have full visibility in order to better understand how work supports strategic initiatives and organizational goals."
