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March 08, 2025 • By KWD

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The Current Work Landscape

Work is more interconnected than ever, which can be tremendous for productivity.

It’s also challenging because employees have more tools at their disposal and assets to manage than ever: documents, group chats, collaboration, onboarding, leave requests, calendars, surveys — the list is endless, and so are the possibilities for errors, wasted time, and system failure.

If productivity is the goal, how do you get there? With the new world of teams and increasing pressure on business leaders to improve performance and optimize team collaboration, what’s holding organizations back?

In order to fix the productivity issues, you first need to understand what the productivity issues are. Let’s frame them up and then solve them, in an easy-to-digest format!

The 5 Barriers

Barrier 1: Distractions

The Problem

Distractions can be normative in modern offices, largely taking two forms. The more prevalent form is task-switching across different platforms because the various assets you need to do your job don’t reside in a single place.

The second form is co-workers coming over with the invariable “Hey, got a minute?” requests. Neither of these is remotely beneficial to employee productivity. It takes 23 minutes on average for an employee to refocus after a distraction, and those quick cubicle/office pop-ins have been show to cost the U.S. about $588 billion in lost productivity per year.

The Solution

Everything an employee needs to be amazing at their job should reside in one location. This cuts down on platform-switching, which is an inherent distraction, and if more resources are located in one central area, it cuts down on co-worker drop-ins as well. Money is saved. Employee effectiveness increases.

Barrier 2: Information is too siloed

The Problem

The “Silo Effect” is very real inside organizations of all sizes, which is an increasing problem because 86% of polled executives and employees blame a lack of collaboration or bad communication for team problems and failures.

Within proprietary reason, information needs to be free for people to be able to effectively do their jobs. One aspect that 55 of the world’s most successful companies have in common, in fact, is extensive collaboration based on open information.

86% of executives and employees blame a lack of collaboration or bad communication for team problems and failures.

The Solution

Although you want great conversations happening face-to-face as well, technology can make a significant impact in terms of organizing information and making it accessible to anyone who needs it.

This is especially relevant when employees enter a project mid-stream or pick up work from a co-worker on leave. What background context do they need to complete the work successfully? If everything is organized centrally and not excessively siloed, the transition of work becomes much easier.

Barrier 3: Communication Issues

The Problem

Communication issues are very common in companies, often occupying the No. 1 complaint slot on employee feedback surveys. Ineffective communications have a huge impact on productivity in the form of mixed messages, unclear goals, and missed opportunities.

A good deal of modern communications problems are tied to all the different places employees might communicate (Slack, email, FB Messenger, project management tools).

What’s worse: this creates a compliance headache for the company by adding to the number of channels and conversations that need to be archived in a legally defensible way. An inconsistent, multi-platform approach to communication is erratic, unbranded, and not strategic.

Inadequate communication can cost companies upwards of $62.4 million per year.

The Solution

Move as much communication as possible into the same place and you cover yourself compliance-wise and user-experience-wise. Consider what General Motors CEO Mary Barra said to a group of Stanford Business School students in 2017:

“Don’t create workplaces where it’s painful to get the simplest task done.”

Centralizing resources and communication moves you away from building that type of organization, which is also going to help you with employee retention.

Barrier 4: Decentralized Decision-Making and Lack of Task Priority

The Problem

In joint research from MIT and the London Business School, 67% of senior leaders cannot name the priorities of their CEO. As this filters throughout an organization, priorities become unclear and so does decision-making.

Employees are confused about what to work on next for the good of the business. Add in the all-too-real concept of “Shiny Object Syndrome,” or constantly pivoting to the next big thing, and you have an environment that LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner describes as “employees being stressed and whipsawed.”

67% of senior leaders can’t name the priorities of their CEO, muddying priorities throughout the rest of the organization

The Solution

Admittedly, it’s very hard to completely solve “Shiny Object Syndrome” in a growth-driven world, because pursuing the next big thing might get you the growth you seek. But can you approach this in a way that doesn’t stress out and churn out your employees? Yes. Use an intranet that underpins your company culture and puts your strategic goals front and center, while allowing your people to contribute and collaborate. If the mission is constantly front and center, many of the priority issues fade to black.

Barrier 5: “Where’s that stored again?”

The Problem

Ever had to jump from platform to platform to fill out a leave form, book a meeting room or organize travel? Spend hours on “administrivia?” This is more common than you think: the World Economic Forum has even argued that tech is making us less productive, not more.

The Solution

Again, centralization! You need a tool that equips people to get work done more efficiently and has everything in one place. This cuts down on questions, on task-switching time, and on aimless wandering through different platforms trying to complete a basic task. It then increases productivity and focus-time. It’s a beautiful trade-off.

1955 vs. 2018

Technology has been unabashedly great for work. Consider: a 40-hour work week in 1955 can be accomplished in 11 hours/week today, largely because of advances in technology available to employees. 

The problem is that, over time, this has led to an increasing amount of distractions and barriers to ultimate productivity for those employees.

You can solve this problem by centralizing everything employees need in one place. Equip them with the tools and communication they need to work efficiently — and bring back the power of technology.

References:

1. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/
2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/is-technology-making-us-less-productive/
3. https://www.netskope.com/press-releases/netskope-report-reveals-75-percent-cloud-apps-not-ready-eu-general-data-protection-regulation
4. https://www.london.edu/news-and-events/news/two-thirds-of-senior-managers-cant-name-their-firms-top-priorities#VpU_UJMrKMJ
5. https://greenorbit.com
6. http://thecontextofthings.com/2017/03/07/shiny-object-syndrome/
7. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/jeff-weiner-manage-compassionately-prepare-next-worker-revolution
8. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/one-communication-tool-you-should-add-your-toolkit
9. https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/mary-barra-simplify-bureaucracy-dont-be-afraid-job-hop
10. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-competencies/communication/pages/the-cost-of-poor-communications.aspx
11. https://blog.trello.com/tips-to-improve-cross-team-collaboration
12. https://www.inc.com/jory-mackay/a-study-of-55-of-worlds-biggest-companies-found-most-collaborative-teams-do-these-5-things.html
13. https://www.themuse.com/advice/this-is-nuts-it-takes-nearly-30-minutes-to-refocus-after-you-get-distracted
14. https://www.fastcompany.com/3044667/the-hidden-costs-of-interruptions-at-work