There’s a paradox playing out across today’s organisations: teams are constantly busy, yet meaningful outcomes feel increasingly out of reach.
Even with rapid advancements in technology, many businesses are not seeing the productivity gains they expected. Instead, employees are overloaded with repetitive tasks, while leaders are left wondering why effort isn’t translating into impact – on performance, profit, or people.
The reality? Too much of the modern workday is tied up in workflows and routines that, while necessary, don’t always require the full attention of highly-skilled professionals. From navigating clunky processes to chasing approvals or formatting reports, we’ve built work environments where operational complexity gets in the way of strategic contribution.
According to Deloitte’s 2025 Human Capital Trends research, 41% of the average workday is spent on activity that doesn’t contribute to organisational value. Despite this, only 22% of respondents believe their organisation is effective at simplifying how work gets done.
Organisations are well aware of the problem – 82% recognise the importance of freeing up worker capacity – yet just 8% say they’re making great progress. This disconnect between awareness and action is costing businesses dearly.
In financial terms, organisations lose 20–30% of their revenue each year due to inefficiencies and poor work design. Multiplied across teams and geographies, that loss quickly compounds.
One of the biggest drains on productivity? The administrative burden. Skilled professionals are routinely pulled into tasks that don’t require their expertise – managing diaries, reworking reports, or pushing documents through multi-step sign-off chains.
This misalignment carries a high cost, not just financially but also in morale and engagement. Time spent on low-impact admin is time taken away from strategic thinking, innovation, and delivering real customer value leading to disengagement, higher turnover, and a disconnect between talent and business outcomes.
Ultimately, when work isn’t designed to unlock human potential, it risks burning out the workforce and undermining long-term organisational performance.
To reclaim capacity and reinvest it where it counts, leading organisations are asking a different set of questions:
This mindset shift – from seeing admin as a necessary evil to a solvable inefficiency – is what’s driving change.
Too often, inefficiency is baked into the way work is structured – from endless meetings to unclear decision rights. To shift this, consider redesigning workflows to minimise friction and maximise focus.
This means identifying and removing the blockers, such as:
By clarifying how decisions are made, streamlining communication and simplifying execution, businesses are able to free up time and cognitive load allowing people to concentrate on the work that moves the needle. And according to Deloitte, organisations that invest in intentional work redesign see significant uplifts in productivity and performance.
Technology alone won’t solve the problem of overloaded teams. In fact, layering more tools onto already complex systems can increase the burden.
Instead, forward-thinking organisations are turning to targeted support models that take pressure off internal teams without compromising on quality or continuity.
This includes:
When done right, this approach doesn’t just reduce admin, it protects the capacity of your most valuable people allowing them to focus on strategic, growth-driving work.
Once capacity is freed, the real opportunity lies in how it’s used. Redeploying time and energy into purposeful work creates a ripple effect across the organisation – from engagement and innovation to revenue and retention.
This might look like:
When people are supported to work in alignment with their skills and goals, performance follows. They’re more motivated, more creative and more connected to the impact they create.
When organisations intentionally reduce complexity and create space for meaningful work, the impact is twofold:
Ultimately, it’s not about doing more with less, It’s about doing less of what distracts, and more of what moves the needle – for the business, and for the people behind it.
Because in today’s world of work, the greatest unlock isn’t more hours – it’s smarter focus.
SmartPA is a leading provider of transformative business support services, disrupting the industry with our highly skilled teams and proprietary methodology, which is enabled by technology and supported by Generative AI.
We help organisations simplify admin and scale faster by combining process optimisation, simplification and cutting-edge technology.
We deliver measurable ROI and unlock potential by removing administrative burden, allowing our clients to focus on top-line growth while we deliver bottom-line impact through data-led decisions.
Click here to find out more about how partnering with SmartPA can help accelerate growth within your organisation. Empower your leaders today by contacting us to discuss your requirements
