As UK policymakers and business leaders continue to prioritise productivity and efficiency, new research from Freshworks suggests many organisations are instead creating a new layer of internal bureaucracy through increasingly complex AI environments.

The findings, from the Freshworks Global Cost of Complexity Report – a study of 12,021 IT decision-makers (director level and above) across six markets, including 2,011 respondents in the UK – show that managing AI complexity is placing growing pressure on IT teams.

Almost nine in ten (88%) UK IT decision-makers say it has increased their team’s workload, while a similar number (87%) report that between 10-39% of their team’s AI-related time is spent managing complexity rather than doing strategic work.

The research suggests that the operational burden of AI is eroding many of the productivity gains organisations expected. UK IT teams now spend around a quarter (25%) of their AI-related working time managing integrations, troubleshooting and complexity instead of focusing on strategic AI initiatives.

Meanwhile, organisations estimate that almost a quarter (24%) of their AI budgets are lost to what Freshworks calls the “complexity tax” – unplanned costs associated with integration challenges, governance, data preparation, rework and ongoing support rather than AI capability itself.

The scale of the challenge is reflected in wider sentiment, with a third (33%) of UK IT decision-makers describing AI complexity as “a very significant issue” for their organisation today.

Recommended reading

• UK Leaders Overestimate AI Readiness, Study Finds
• 86% of IT Leaders Fear Multi-Agent AI Complexity
• AI Agents Are Transforming Enterprise AI Adoption
• Report: 1.5 Million Enterprise AI Agents At Risk of ‘Going Rogue’

Simon Hayward, Vice President of Sales, EMEA, comments: “UK businesses are under pressure to boost productivity and cut through bureaucracy, yet our research shows AI is often adding to the workload rather than easing it.

“When IT teams are spending a quarter of their time managing complexity instead of driving innovation, and organisations are losing almost a quarter of their AI investment to unexpected overheads, it’s clear that complexity has become a major barrier to realising AI’s potential.

“If AI is going to move the needle on UK productivity, organisations need to plan for how it fits into their existing systems and teams, not just for the technology itself.”