ABBYY: A quarter of employees lose a day of productivity per week

During the pandemic, there was a lot of discussion around workers’ productivity, and whether they would work as well from home as they did in the office.

While employees largely proven they were able to work productively from home – sometimes more so than in the office – it is clear that often the tech that keeps teams connected can also be a major source of distraction.

Another drain on workplace productivity is employees spending time locating documents in various different digital locations, like Excel sheets, emails or Slack conversations.

A study by ABBYY found that 92% of more than 5,000 workers in the US, UK, France, and Japan waste time searching documents for information they need to serve customers.

In addition, 24% said they lose a day of productivity a week on this task and 61% said this made their job much more difficult.

Talking about these findings, ABBYY CPO Weronika Niemczyk said, “There is no escaping the use of documents no matter the type of business that people work in, even when they are born digital.”

She continues: “In this era of employees increasingly leaving employers who don’t offer the conditions, tools and support they expect”.

Not only is bad tech pushing employees to look for new jobs, but it also leads to poor business decisions and impacts the customer experience.

20% of employees told ABBYY their struggles around documents led to a poor customer experience; this rose to 25% in the UK.

The need for automated document processing

32% of employees surveyed by ABBYY said that document artificial intelligence (AI) technology can help them to focus on more engaging, higher value projects, than trawling through documents looking for information.

In addition, 52% said AI-powered software would make their lives easier and 32% agreed it would improve their employee experience, as well as customer experience.

Therefore, Niemczyk called on employers to “upskill and augment workers with AI capabilities, especially when working with company assets such as documents.”

She continued: “AI skills for documents deliver cost savings, not just in terms of speed of processes and a reduction in errors but also alleviates the need for additional staff.

“As a result, happier, more engaged employees have more time to dedicate to the tasks that matter – delivering superior customer experiences and creative problem solving.”

ABBYY VP Neil Murphy added that “the daily drag of documents will require technology such as AI skills to empower employees in order to retain them in the long run.”