Workplace Stats Part I: “Work About Work” Still Dominates Workers’ Time in 2022

Around this time last year, we explored Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index to better understand how employees in the U.S. and around the world spend their time at work. This year’s Anatomy of Work Global Index surveyed 10,624 knowledge workers across the globe to find out what most impacts productivity, efficiency, and agility within a wide range of organizations.

In a two-part series, we are taking a look at this year’s report to find out what’s the same, what’s changed, and how the Glances no-code integration platform can help companies reprioritize skilled work and decrease wasted time. Part I reviews two of the survey’s key lessons regarding “work about work” and burnout. Part II reviews learnings about remote work and app overload.

Let’s dive into Part I:

Work about work—activities like communicating about projects, searching for information, and switching between apps—still consumes the majority of workers’ time.

According to the report, “work about work remains a persistent threat, with roughly 23 hours of the 40-hour workweek lost to menial, repetitive tasks.” This means that skilled work, the work that is often the most beneficial to a company’s bottom line, and strategic work, plans of action designed to achieve goals and objectives, both get very little time and attention.

Infographic courtesy of Asana, Anatomy of Work Global Index 2022

To put the percentages in financial terms, a business that pays an employee an annual salary of $50,000 is paying that employee $29,000 a year just to attend meetings, answer emails, check notifications, and perform similar small tasks. These small tasks most likely have little to do with the employee’s specialized skill set for which she/he was hired.

Whether looking at it from a time, skill, or cost perspective, an employee spending over half her/his time on work about work is not a good use of resources.

Burnout remains a major issue, and it harms everything from attracting talent and retaining employees to creating psychological safety at work and meeting business objectives.

It’s probably not a surprise that the work-about-work issue described above has a clear effect on employee burnout and feelings of inadequacy. When workers are spending the majority of their time and energy on tasks that seem endless and come with very few rewards, they are bound to feel overwhelmed and discouraged.

Asana’s survey found that “burnout and imposter syndrome are key challenges that workers face, with 42% suffering both at the same time. Lack of clarity, too many notifications, and hours of meetings all have real consequences beyond annoyance—they directly contribute to these occupational hazards.” Over time, morale drops, miscommunication rises, engagement declines, and mistakes increase.

Creating a downward spiral, these issues lead to more burnout and more imposter syndrome, which in turn cause further performance and productivity problems, not to mention higher turnover rates.

“Almost one in four of workers experience burnout four or more times per year, while 40% think it’s an inevitable part of success.”

- Asana

What was true in 2021 is still true in 2022: Too much work about work and burnout harm productivity, efficiency, and agility in the workplace. This is still true as well: Glances is the best solution to save time and refocus on the talent-based work your employees were hired to do.

Glances functions as the central hub that unifies your company’s favorite workplace apps (CRMs, email platforms, marketing platforms, payment platforms…the list goes on), providing a single view of the data you need. Even better, that data comes through in real time without any coding needed. Glances works within any app or webpage so you can securely view your customer insights and personal tasks anywhere online.

The complexity of the modern workplace isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and companies will have to contend with it one way or another. Make all those popular business apps like Asana, HubSpot, Zendesk, Stripe, Zoho CRM, and others work better and harder for your team by consolidating them with Glances.

Ready to simplify your work? Try Glances free for 14 days!

Start your free trial to connect your favorite business apps and access your data in one easy click, from any app or webpage.

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Asana Anatomy of Work Global Index 2022