Businesses are grappling with a significant productivity drain due to widespread data skills gaps among their workforce. According to data from Multiverse, a skills intelligence and development platform, employees are losing an average of 26 working days per year due to inefficiencies in handling data-related tasks.

The inaugural Multiverse Skills Intelligence Report, which pulls data from Multiverse’s skills assessment and development platform, analyzes the skills and productivity levels of over 12,000 employees across 18 major industries in the U.S. and U.K. The assessment found that workers spend an average of 14.31 hours per week on data tasks—equivalent to 36% of their total working week.

However, a staggering 4.34 hours of this time is spent unproductively due to inadequate data skills. Overall, workers spend over 10% of their total working time ineffectively due to skill deficiencies in areas like data analysis, automation, and predictive modeling.

The result: project development is slowed, answers take longer to work out, errors introduced early on compound, trends are missed, products and services take longer to get to market.

The report highlights a paradox in the modern workplace: while data has become integral to most roles, many employees lack the fundamental skills to leverage it effectively. Half of the surveyed workers reported challenges in making data analysis more efficient or automating processes. Nearly half struggled with using data for forecasting.

Technical proficiency is also lagging, with 57% of employees reporting no or only basic Excel skills, 55% lacking competence in visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau, and 86% having no Python skills.

The impact of these skills gaps varies across industries. The education sector reported the highest proportion of unproductive time spent on data tasks at 38%, followed closely by manufacturing and engineering at 36%. Even traditionally data-intensive sectors like banking and finance reported 35% of data-related work time as unproductive.

Despite these challenges, there’s a silver lining: 90% of employees express a desire to improve their data skills. This aligns with the plans of many organizations, with 76% intending to upskill existing employees and 73% planning to reskill workers into new roles.

Multiverse works with over 1,500 companies, including Microsoft, Citi, KPMG, Unilever, and Capita to offer digital skills assessments and programs tailored to their existing workforce.

Multiverse’s skills intelligence tool uses AI-powered assessments to create an inventory of existing employee skill sets, and help companies reveal critical capabilities they need to build. Using these insights, Multiverse develops a targeted, data-driven employee upskilling and reskilling strategy that closes skills gaps for businesses.

To date, Multiverse has tracked benefits to individuals and employers alike from this approach:

• 52% of of employees that took part in Multiverse training programs saw a salary increase during or shortly after the program
• 36% earned promotions as a result of their new skills
• Multiverse has tracked over $2 billion in ROI for its clients
• 30% of apprentices come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds

Euan Blair, founder and CEO, said: “Companies recognise the value of big data, and many are collecting vast amounts of it. But their employees are spending hours each week, struggling in spreadsheets, because they’ve never been trained in these areas that they’re now expected to know. The economic cost of the time spent unproductively grappling with data tasks is in the billions: it’s something companies need to take seriously. Companies have spent billions on software, but hardly anything on the skills needed to get the most from that software.”

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