Productivity can seem like an elusive goal at work, but actually, it’s a measurable equation of input (time and labor) compared to output (goods or services produced). And, by many accounts, global productivity has skyrocketed over the past 25 years, in part due to advances in technology and automation.
However, when you’re struggling to get through your to-do list, spending too many hours in meetings that don’t actually accomplish anything and wasting time on miscommunications within your team, you might feel less productive than ever.
How can you remove the barriers to productivity so you can collaborate better and get more done? Unsurprisingly, the answer may lie with AI. McKinsey research estimates that generative AI’s impact on productivity could add between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion in value to the global economy annually.
What’s getting in the way of productivity?
Disengagement at work
According to Gallup, employees who are not engaged or are actively disengaged with their work account for $8.9 trillion in lost productivity worldwide.
Not focusing on what matters
75% of employees reported spending more than one hour a day on administrative tasks, but only 35% felt this would be meaningful to success in their role.
Toggling between tools
Leaders who use more than 10 apps were up to 15 percentage points more likely than those who used fewer apps to experience consequences related to ineffective collaboration.
The impact of bad collaboration
Collaboration is a big part of our workday. When teams struggle with working together effectively, it can lead to a host of challenges that hinder productivity.
Our 2024 Global Collaboration in the Workplace report found that leaders, in particular, spent a significant amount of time (three or more hours) on meetings and email. Nearly half of leaders said they spent more time on these tasks than they wanted to.
What’s more, 57% of leaders felt that if a meeting was canceled, their alternative use of time would be more productive. This may indicate that many leaders could be spending too much time in meetings that they feel are unproductive or unnecessary.
Ineffective collaboration can have far-reaching effects. According to the report, a third of leaders said they spend an hour or more resolving challenges related to bad collaboration, like participating in meetings and chats with no clear outcome, resolving misunderstandings or miscommunication between teammates, or following up with colleagues on the status of a project. Wasting just one hour on any of these tasks could cost organizations up to an estimated $16,491 per manager in inefficient productivity.
When you look at these stats, it’s clear that collaboration and productivity influence each other — when one is ineffective, the other suffers, too. Some of the strategies discussed in the next section are designed to help your employees work together more effectively and improve their individual productivity, too.
3 steps to greater productivity
So, how do you increase productivity? Addressing inefficiencies brought on by tool overload, low-impact tasks, and disengagement can help you create a better, more collaborative employee experience. When employees have the tools and environment they need to do their work successfully, they can be truly productive.
1 - Improve employee experience through technology
When comparing employee engagement levels, Gallup found that the best-engaged workforces had 18% higher levels of productivity over the lowest-engaged workforces. By improving employee engagement, you could reap the benefits of better productivity, not to mention higher levels of profitability, better retention, and lower absenteeism — other trends Gallup found in highly engaged workforces
The concept of employee engagement has changed in recent years as teams have gotten more dispersed and work arrangements have become more flexible. It’s evolved from simply engaging employees to delivering a positive employee experience through a focus on people, processes, and technology.
IT leaders have an increasingly important role to play in employee experience. If your employees are constantly filing IT support tickets or using third-party apps instead of the tools they’re given, they might feel like they don’t have the tools they need to succeed. If they’re struggling to collaborate with team members in different locations, they might feel like they’re spinning their wheels and not actually getting things done. These pain points naturally affect their experience at work and can all contribute to disengagement — not to mention, a dip in productivity
On the other hand, if employees have tools that make it easy to communicate and collaborate however they need to (whether it’s a quick phone call, an impromptu video meeting, whiteboard, shared document, or chat channel), they’ll be able to build stronger relationships with teammates and get more done with less friction. All that can contribute to a positive experience, a feeling of connection, and a higher likelihood of engagement.
2 - Enable time savings with AI
Time is an essential part of the productivity equation, and how you spend it matters. Finding ways to save time on rote or repetitive tasks allows you to allocate those minutes or hours toward activities that contribute to productivity.
According to a 2024 AI survey commissioned by Zoom and conducted by Morning Consult, 48% of employees who use AI say it saves them one or more hours a day on researching and organizing information, and 46% say it saves them the same amount of time on automating repetitive tasks.
When asked what they’d use the time savings for, 40% of employees said they’d improve their processes and workflows, and 38% said they’d engage in uninterrupted focus time to complete their work, tasks they also viewed as most meaningful to success in their role. By using AI to automate or get assistance with some of their more routine tasks, employees can focus their efforts on different activities that help increase output, drive revenue, and otherwise move the needle, thereby improving their productivity.
So, how can employers successfully implement AI? Providing AI tools isn’t enough — employees also need training and education to help them understand the capabilities and how to incorporate them into their work. Additionally, organizations should focus on identifying the areas where AI can help them, and creating custom workflows or clear use cases for their employees to adopt.
3 - Simplify your tech stack
Toggling between multiple tools and apps may take a fraction of a second, but when you’re constantly moving from your team chats to your meeting notes to your calendar and back, all that context-switching can add up. Our collaboration report found that 37% of leaders and 42% of employees who use more than 10 apps take 15 minutes or longer to refocus when switching tasks.
For companies, that’s a lot of potential productivity and real dollars wasted. And for employees, that’s a lot of precious time squandered.
Start with re-evaluating your company’s tech stack and consolidating multiple point solutions to a few core applications. You may find that consolidating to a single platform like Zoom Workplace is more efficient and cost-effective than having separate apps (and licenses) for chatting with colleagues, making phone calls, scheduling meetings, creating video clips, and whiteboarding. Adding to that, tight integrations across Zoom products and a flexible ecosystem of apps allow you and your employees to build more seamless workflows — meaning less context-switching and fewer seconds lost to toggling.
With this in mind, implementing AI can’t be a cobbled-on solution. Look for AI tools like Zoom AI Companion that are built into the applications your employees use every day to help streamline their workflows even more.
Next steps to boosting productivity
If you’re exploring how to improve productivity within your organization, see how Zoom Workplace, your AI-first work platform, can help.
AI Companion is seamlessly woven into Zoom Workplace at no additional cost*, helping your teams incorporate the time-saving benefits of generative AI across their meetings, chat, phone, email, and productivity tools while helping improve your ROI.
By consolidating with Zoom, your IT team can benefit from streamlined management, fewer contracts, reduced TCO and less time spent on training and support.
