Busy work is getting in the way of…work, according to Workfront's sixth annual State of Work report.

Workfront surveyed 3,750 professionals across the U.S., U.K., the Netherlands and Germany, and found that just 43 percent spend their workweek on the jobs they were hired to do.

"The number one culprit? Wasteful meetings," the authors write. "And based on our qualitative review of thousands of companies and teams, the central driver of wasteful meetings is poor mechanisms for strategic alignment, work planning and work status communication."

Other "productivity blockers" cited by the respondents? Excessive emails, excessive oversight, poor work prioritization and a lack of standard processes for workflow.

In fact, respondents on average say they are interrupted an average of 13.9 times per day. Workfront cites University of California Irvine research that found it can take more than 20 minutes after an interruption to return to the original task.

"The very tools we're using to enable communication and collaboration may actually interfere with productivity," the authors write. "Digging deeper, the same research also finds that people who work in a state of constant interruption report higher levels of stress and actually adapt their behavior to the interruption environment."

Workfront's survey found that 87 percent of respondents think leaders should reconsider the way they think about technology in the workplace, while 84 percent say businesses today are missing opportunities by not moving to more modern solutions.

Specifically, 86 percent of the respondents say next-generation employees expect workplace technology that looks more like Amazon and Instagram, with 94 percent saying searching at work should match the ease of Googling.

It would also greatly help if workers one centralized place to see all work across the company, according to the survey. A majority of the respondents (71 percent) would like to have a single destination to understand and manage work, but 69 percent say they don't have that type of solution in place.

Moreover, 66 percent say their company has yet to have a "chief work officer"–an executive charged with coordinating people, work, content, process and performance–and one that oversees "the complete experience of working for the company."

"The workforce understands that work management, as a practice, is vitally important," the authors write. "If it were up to them, it would be an executive leadership role."

Workfront recommends that employers consider the following questions when considering a shift to strategic work management:

Does every person in my organization understand our company strategy and their role in our success?
Do leaders in our organization work to ensure people and teams can focus on the work they've been hired to lead, drive, and accomplish?
Are we measuring and incentivizing our people for accomplishing tasks and finishing projects, or achieving strategic outcomes?
Are the technology tools we use helping people accomplish their strategic objectives?
Do we provide all of our team members with the "why" behind their work?
Are we helping our people and teams align with strategic decisions?

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Instant Insights /

Employees spend less than half of their workweek on actual work

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