Amid ongoing discussions about the UK’s productivity crisis, Atlassian’s annual State of Teams Report reveals that nearly two thirds (64%) of UK workers feel more overwhelmed with the current pace of work than a few years ago.

As UK companies continue to manage evolving ways of working, poor collaboration practices are contributing to workplace burnout that could further derail productivity.

Company collaboration killers

UK workers currently waste an average of 9 hours a week tracking down the information they need to do their work – that’s more than a full working day every week.

UK workers also spend nearly half (48%) of their working week on ‘busy work, like sharing information, tracking people down, and resolving misunderstandings, rather than mission-critical work.

This is driven by beliefs about how to source information – over half (53%) of employees believe the only way to get the information they need is to ask someone or schedule a meeting.

As a result, 55% find their work is often blocked while waiting for information from other teams, and just over a third (34%) feel that collaborating with other teams slows down how quickly work gets done.

Cross-team collaboration is posing a clear challenge to productivity and streamlining workflows, with 55% admit that in the past year, their team has learnt about an important decision another team made way too late. It’s also leading to unnecessary duplication of work – as over half of the UK workforce is unknowingly working on the same task as other teams.

However, cracking the collaboration conundrum offers obvious benefits. For teams with clear collaboration processes in place, the majority (89%) agree that their team can meet tight deadlines when needed.

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Dr Molly Sands, head of Teamwork Labs at Atlassian said: This research highlights a critical issue in the modern workplace: the systems designed to support employees are not keeping pace with the increasing demands of work. As teams become more cross-functional, the inability to quickly access information is creating bottlenecks that slow progress.

“This ‘digital hide-and-seek’ not only wastes time but also stifles creativity and innovation, as employees are forced to focus on administrative tasks rather than high-impact work”.

AI as your virtual teammate

In order to work faster and more efficiently, 40% of UK workers have called for all teams across their organisation to use the same processes to get work done, while 30% want to see teams use the same tools.

In particular, when used in tandem with human expertise, AI can help to unlock greater cross-company collaboration. As it stands, over half (59%) of the UK workforce believe that AI will improve the speed and quality of their team’s work, while 43% feel that AI is helping them to show up as a better teammate.

However, to unlock AI’s full collaboration potential, teams need robust training – in fact, over two thirds (67%) of UK workers think they could use AI more effectively to discover and manage information.

Given that 69% of the UK workforce believe it would be easier to support the business if their goals and strategy were clearer, adopting tools that create a single source of truth offer a solution to crack the UK’s collaboration conundrum.