Visual collaboration software firm Lucid Software has released data from its work acceleration survey, UK businesses are struggling to implement adequate work processes, resulting in 53% of workers spending up to 2 hours per day looking for information to do their job.

This is costing companies roughly 520 hours a year and £12,901 of the average annual salary of a UK knowledge worker, according to the firm.

As UK productivity growth continues to lag behind international competitors, most recently coming in 19% below the US, overcoming this information gap is critical if UK firms want to enable employees to work smarter and faster and drive long term growth. This is what Lucid Software is calling the acceleration equation.

The impact of poor processes is clear: 44% of UK workers say they don’t meet their objectives due to information gaps within existing workflows.

Similarly, 31% believe projects regularly miss deadlines or don’t meet company objectives due to miscommunication or missing details.

Recreating processes or documentation due to difficulty accessing information is happening daily according to 34% of UK workers, highlighting significant operational inefficiency. As a result, almost half (48%) of workers believe standardising these processes could save them up to 10 hours each week.

Implementing standard processes presents several challenges for businesses. According to 44% of workers, technical and system limitations are the leading barrier, followed by balancing process compliance with other business priorities (43%), and ensuring consistent enforcement across the organisation (42%).

Poor communication slows down productivity

According to 41% of UK workers, it can take up to 3 hours to form a team consensus around what work needs to be done, and even then 37% leave meetings unsure of what they’re expected to do next. As a result, 47% state their project teams lack alignment. Overcoming this challenge starts with ensuring workers are aligned and have access to a single source of truth.

Providing UK workers the appropriate tools, as opposed to an excess of  tools, is essential for teams to succeed. Currently, nearly a third (29%) of workers state they use between 6-10 tools or products daily at work, yet 24% believe having too many systems to check is their biggest challenge when searching for information work, slowing collaboration and decision making further.

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Dan Lawyer, chief product officer at Lucid Software stated, “In today’s fast-moving workplace, clarity can’t be optional. Workers are spending too much time searching for basic information needed to do their job which is crippling productivity and making it more difficult to move projects forward.

“To move work forward, teams need clearer, more centralised information that integrates with how they already work—solutions that drive visibility, alignment, and execution, not just more notifications.”