The Digital Workplace Productivity Report 2021

All individuals who participated in this survey work at organizations ranging in size from 10 - 500 that have wholly or partly moved to digital work. The 100 respondents who participated were knowledge workers spread across North America. All of them used some form of a digital workplace to collaborate with their colleagues and transact work on a daily basis.

 

Some of the key takeaways from the data we gleaned through the survey:

Too many tools are a way bigger problem than you'd think.

What would you think about hopping between half a dozen different apps to accomplish one task? Nearly 44.3% of respondents surveyed confirmed that more tools complicate their work lives. The rest were split between excessive notifications, too many meetings and interestingly, all of the above formed a significant chunk at 23.7%.

Emails might be boring, but they're certainly not dead.

As much as they're despised as a monolithic collaboration nightmare, an interesting finding in the survey was that emails are still the most popular tool when it comes to digital work. Nearly 82.9% of those surveyed reported emails to be an indispensable part of digital work while other work collaboration tools came in at 10.5%.

If more tools are the problem, then the numbers matter.

How big of a problem are more tools when you build a digital workplace? One of the core findings from the survey point to a large number of organizations, nearly 84.2%, using less than half a dozen applications for digital work. The ones with bigger problems were those that used up to 10 applications for work. On the bright side, that's only 15.8% of organizations worldwide.

Chasing productivity can be hard. Here's a tip to finding it.

Tools, and more tools complicate work. They're the most blamed cause in losses of productivity at 55.3%. However, there were more interesting findings. Almost 43.4% of respondents said productivity would gain a huge boost if meetings became more concise and efficient. Other findings were a tilt towards "no meeting" days and lesser chat.

The most hated thing about digital work isn't surprising at all.

In digital workplace ecosystems, information is power. However, 51.3% of respondents who worked at a digital workplace report that finding the information they need to accomplish their work is a big problem. Uncomplicating the search process and creating a more streamlined path to information is a pressing need. Interestingly, switching tabs and replying to emails were also equally despised. However, meetings ranked lowest on the list of things that needed to go.

Work can bring many levels of complexity. Discover the power of simple with Kissflow Digital Workplace.