UK workers are wasting billions of hours on administrative tasks – no, I'm not joking

• UK office workers waste 11.3 billion hours on administrative tasks every year
• Dropbox employees report saving 7.9 hours/week by using AI
• Better tech and flexible work could unlock creativity

New data from Dropbox has quantified just how much time we're wasting and precisely where AI can help – UK office workers alone are said to waste 11.3 billion hours annually on administrative tasks like emailing and scheduling.

In fact, only two in five (42%) UK workers have enough time for creative work, placing the country behind the likes of Germany and the US.

Due to being bogged down in meaningless tasks, nearly half (45%) are only able to spend 0-5 hours per week on developing new ideas or solutions, making progress especially slow.

UK office workers waste billions of hours annually on administrative work

One in four (24%) were found to be spending between six and 10 hours per week on administrative tasks – roughly the equivalent of a whole working day. Coincidentally, time constraints were found to be the biggest limiter on innovation and long-term thinking.

Half (51%) of UK workers feel they have the necessary tools and time to do their jobs efficiently, but this still places them ahead of France and the US where workers appear to be less satisfied.

Nevertheless, it seems like most office workers spend too much time chasing their tail. Given an extra hour in the day, 27% would catch up on tasks and 18% would aim to reduce workload.

Speaking about its own solutions, Dropbox said that its AI-using employees save an average of 7.9 hours per week on tasks like research, coding and writing – more or less a full working day. An overwhelming number of Dropbox's employees (96%) now use AI weekly for tasks like information retrieval, brainstorming, coding, documentation and drafting.

Looking ahead, the company states that "systemic transformation" is vital, be that access to new tools or embracing flexible working models to enable greater autonomy.

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