Workers lose nearly a day each week to disconnected workplace systems, Workday finds

Employees across Australia and New Zealand are spending nearly a full working day each week switching between disconnected tools and systems at work, according to new research from Workday.

The study, The Copy/Paste Economy: Why Task-Oriented AI Is Failing the Enterprise, examined how employees are using AI and enterprise software. The research, conducted by The Harris Poll, surveyed more than 6,000 professionals globally, including respondents from Australia and New Zealand, working across HR, finance, IT and operations.

The findings show almost one in three workers spend over seven hours a week copying information between applications, reconciling conflicting data, and manually feeding context into tools.  

“Too many employees are serving as the human middleware between disconnected systems,” said Workday ANZ Vice President and Managing Director Jo-Anne Ruhl. 

Three-quarters of respondents said administrative tasks such as reconciling conflicting information across multiple systems create significant daily friction, compared with 70% globally.

Meanwhile, 63% reported spending at least half of their effort coordinating between systems and teams rather than focusing on higher-value work.

Disconnected workplace systems slow decision-making

The report also found disconnected technology is slowing business decision-making. Nearly 75% of respondents said decisions are delayed when information is missing or unclear, while 64% said teams regularly disagree about which data is correct.

According to the research, 61% of employees in Australia and New Zealand said AI has reduced the time it takes to complete tasks. However, these efficiencies are not translating into overall time savings.

Workday attributed many of these challenges to organisations adopting standalone AI tools without integrating them into their core business systems.  The research found only 30% of respondents have AI embedded into core enterprise platforms, leaving many employees responsible for manually connecting workflows.

“The companies seeing the most value from AI are building it directly into the systems where their people, data, and work come together,” Ruhl said.

The company argued the research highlighted that integrated AI platforms perform significantly better than disconnected, standalone applications.

“Companies are seeing the most success when they make integration the priority, building AI directly into the core systems where work happens,” Workday said.

“By making this shift, organisations can move the burden of low-value copy/paste work from the employee to AI itself.”