Wrike released a report several years ago focused on employee happiness. We found that the happiest employees say “doing meaningful work” is the most critical factor in workplace happiness, ranking even higher than compensation.

Impactful work has always been our north star because we know it builds a better company culture and, ultimately, produces better outcomes. Happy employees = happy brands and happy customers. Organizations have reached this conclusion, as well. More business leaders say they are prioritizing impactful work now compared to six months ago. 

But what does that really mean? And what quantity of day-to-day work can be considered impactful? 

Definitions vary, but most business leaders broadly agree that impactful work contributes to the strategy, growth, and revenue of the business. At the other end of the scale, administrative tasks are considered to be low impact. 

“Impactful work means work that will have an effect on the overall running and quality of the business. These are essential working standards.”

“Impactful work is work that’s done by an individual or a team that aligns with and advances the mission of the brand.”

“I define impactful work as productive work that’ll benefit both the person doing the work and the corporation responsible for assigning the work. It should inspire and motivate others to follow the footpath to success.” 

Because of Wrike’s focus on impactful work, we’ve previously made it our mission to uncover the Dark Matter of Work (activity that is not visible or easily trackable for knowledge workers or business leaders due to the wide range of touchpoints it takes place across). We’ve also examined efficiency before — but organizations are facing even more headwinds than they were in the past. 

Are they now at a breaking point and ready to say enough is enough? If so, how can organizations tackle that challenge sooner rather than later? To find out, we’ve taken our investigation a stage further by exploring how organizations have addressed their inefficiencies this year in order to align on goals and focus on the work that drives outcomes.

It turns out that knowledge workers and business leaders recognize impactful work when they see it, and believe roughly the same amount of their workload fits the description. The bad news is, just over half of work is viewed as high impact across both groups — with the remaining half being low-impact work – and only 28% of leaders are prioritizing high-impact work.

• Knowledge workers believe just 54% of their work is high impact.

• Business leaders believe just 57% of their work is high impact. 

• 28% of business leaders are now prioritizing high-impact work.

• 23% of knowledge workers believe their senior leadership is focused on aligning the entire organization around strategic priorities, compared to 20% six months ago.

In this report, we’ve also looked at how the introduction of AI has impacted workflows, and gauged the general perception of early wins from introducing the technology. And we’ve benchmarked employee happiness as an indicator of where teams may need some additional support. 

Wrike’s findings:

• Compared to six months ago, businesses are more focused on prioritizing high-impact work.
• However, reducing the amount of strategic priorities organizations track on a quarterly basis was the lowest priority on their list.
• Knowledge workers and business leaders agree that meetings and duplicative work are key sources of inefficiencies.
• There’s a concerning disconnect between business leaders and knowledge workers in the perception of how much AI is impacting workloads.
• Businesses are seeing a significant monetary impact from efficiency measures they have implemented in the last year, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

The current state of play

Increasing workloads

Knowledge workers are experiencing increased workloads over the past year — albeit to a slightly lesser extent than business leaders believe. Shifting expectations, working methods, and economic circumstances have led to a scenario where organizations’ employees have more on their plates than ever before, and not enough is currently being done to help them.

• Knowledge workers report that their workload has grown by 31% in the last year.
• Business leaders report an increase of 46% for their department/team. 

What could be causing it? Businesses have relied on quiet hiring (one of the nine workplace trends named by industry leader Gartner for 2023) to help weather economic uncertainty in the last year. This involves upskilling existing employees to meet evolving organizational needs without changes in overall headcount — another example of strategic reprioritization in action. Business leaders and knowledge workers agree that upskilling was the number one method used to increase efficiency in the past year.

While quiet hiring can be beneficial for organizations and knowledge workers alike when approached in the right way, there’s no doubt that in some cases, increased responsibility and correspondingly larger workloads can become a reality for knowledge workers. In this situation, it’s more important than ever for them to be able to effectively prioritize impactful work.

Division over AI

In a bid to transition from doing more with less to simply doing less while being more effective, organizations have invested in technology and software solutions. The goal was to give knowledge workers more time to focus on impactful work, allowing these solutions to take on the tasks that weren’t inspiring or mission critical, but still necessary. 

Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, a significant burden of hope has been placed on GenAI and automation technologies as potential salvation from the tedious, repetitive, and burdensome work that forms a certain percentage of any role. So, almost two years on, how close are we to this becoming a reality?

In short, it depends on who you ask. There’s a stark difference between the extent to which knowledge workers and business leaders perceive work within their organization to be AI assisted, as business leaders believe it’s helping with more than double the proportion of work that knowledge workers do. 

• Business leaders estimate that 32% of their team’s workload is assisted by AI.
• Knowledge workers estimate that only 14% of their workload is assisted by AI. 

In reality, it’s likely that the true assistance AI provides is somewhere in between the differing assessments, which still represents a significant proportion of the overall workload. And knowledge workers are clear that where AI is assisting with workloads, it’s effective in doing so. For their part, business leaders believe the impact to be even more significant.

• 80% of business leaders say their investment in new technology has somewhat or significantly improved their employees’ ability to do their job.

• The proportion of knowledge workers who agree that automation and AI have somewhat/greatly improved their ability to do their role is lower (51%). 

Employee unhappiness

Despite any potential assistance from AI, less than two-thirds of knowledge workers report feeling happy at work. Workload increases and a lack of clear strategic prioritization are contributing to burnout. 

• 49% of knowledge workers don’t feel their work is recognized.

• 48% don’t feel like they can contribute to business outcomes.

• Knowledge workers spend 40.8 hours of their own time each year making up for wasted time at work.

The bottom line 

Our research shows that there is less focus on AI vs. a year ago and more on prioritization — but this pendulum swing hasn’t been effective. Rather than workloads decreasing with prioritization, the number of priorities has generally increased instead. To achieve optimal results, strategic AI usage and clear company-wide prioritization need to be focused on in equal measure, because the former supports the latter. 

A better employee experience should be one of the ultimate aims. It’s a crucial factor for boosting efficiency, maintaining productivity gains, and retaining talent, especially in the wake of increased pressure, layoffs, and even quiet hiring. 

To achieve this, take the resources being pooled into unnecessary and low-impact work and funnel them to high-impact work. Watch employee happiness and engagement increase. Watch revenue grow. Do the following:

• Decrease the number of priorities for knowledge workers.
• Set clear goals with them.

But most importantly…

• Get back on the same page — shift all work to one platform.

This year, business leaders have supported knowledge workers with the introduction of new technology and software tools to help them prioritize impactful work.

But the thing knowledge workers crave above all is simplicity. They see this as the key to avoiding frustrations around unproductive meetings, duplicative work, and effort without impact. The evidence clearly suggests that they’re on to something, as organizations that have consolidated existing technology stacks have seen the most benefit from efficiency measures.

While surprisingly few organizations have focused on money saved through efficiency measures as a metric for success, the testimony of those that do indicate it is delivering significant returns in this capacity. But the signs clearly point to more efficiency gains available for savvy companies aiming to simplify and consolidate further.

Organizations need a long-term solution that works seamlessly with the tools they are already using: an intelligent work management solution that can be customized to meet the needs of individual teams while scaling to support large, cross-departmental workflows, supporting simplification across the board.

Wrike

Wrike is the most intelligent work management platform for any workflow. At Wrike, we’re liberating work by democratizing workflows so anyone can easily create simple to complex workstreams, automate mundane tasks, and manage impactful work from start to finish. 

Start a 14-day free trial, and join 20,000 other companies that have chosen Wrike as their single source of truth. 

Methodology

Our research was conducted by Sapio Research, which surveyed 1,000 business leaders and 2,500 knowledge workers across the U.S., U.K., DACH, France, and Japan. In both cases, individuals working in companies with 500+ employees were targeted.

The research consisted of interviews via an online panel and took place across March and April 2024. Respondents operate across a wide range of job functions, departments, and industries, providing as comprehensive an overview of the issues examined as possible.

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