Labor productivity is a key building block of the US economy. It’s also the first thing that business decision makers look towards when determining the long-term health of their own operations and how much to invest in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.
Here at Tech.co, we’re constantly interested in the ways in which technology itself can help people work better, with workplace productivity high on the list of ways to measure its impact. Instead of waiting for the answers to come to us, we’ve just launched our very first annual report on the topic: it surveys over 1,000 business leaders on the health of their organizations, as well as what factors may have helped them succeed.
You can download Tech.co’s Impact of Technology on the Workplace 2024 Report for free.
Alternatively, we’ve highlighted some of the key workplace productivity statistics below, with a specific eye to emerging trends like AI and other technologies. Read on for a deep dive into just how the right tech can change what productivity at work looks like in your organization.
Key Workplace Productivity Statistics
Tech.co’s 2024 Impact of Tech on the Workplace report unearthed a host of fresh, never-before-seen statistics on productivity in the workplace. Here are the key findings, which we’ll explain in more depth below:
- 56% of businesses report high productivity levels
- 72% of respondents who use AI extensively report high organizational productivity
- 80% of businesses using 7 collaboration tools reported high organizational productivity
- 46% of business leaders said communication technology will “highly affect” performance in 2024
What Is Productivity in the Workplace?
In a nutshell, productivity refers to the value an organization creates divided by the labor costs required to create it. It’s measured across many industries in the United States, where it has grown at a mere 1.4% rate overall in the years between 2005 and 2023. For the purposes of this survey, productivity was self-defined by our survey respondents, US-based senior leadership professionals with a range of job titles covering managers, directors, and more.
Productivity at Work in 2024: Key Insights
Boosting productivity isn’t about forcing workers to work harder or longer hours. In fact, adding pressure can easily have the opposite effect by creating a more challenging environment. Before we get to the ways that technologies like ChatGPT or collaboration tools can help, we need to take the self-reported temperature of the industry today.
1. Just over half of businesses (56%) report high productivity levels
The good news is that most business leaders stand behind their organization, with a narrow majority, (56%) saying that their business is highly productive. That statistic accounts for two categories of responses, with 40% of repondents reporting “high” productivity, and another 16% saying they had “very high” productivity.
These statistics alone aren’t enough, though. We looked closer at the data to figure out what uses of technology might correlate with high productivity. We started with the splashiest modern technology: AI.
AI Productivity
ChatGPT kicked off widespread cross-industry interest in the workplace benefits of artificial intelligence when it launched in November 2022, and we’ve heard a lot about the technology ever since.
However, one big question still remains. Is AI actually as useful as it claims? After all, tech hype doesn’t always translate to lasting (or even fully positive) change.
2. 72% of respondents who use AI extensively report high organizational productivity, compared to 55% of respondents who use AI to a limited extent
We divided our survey responses into several categories, isolating the business leaders who said they used AI “extensively,” in order to compare them against those who were familar with the technology, but only used it to a limited extent. Of the companies that used AI more, 72% reported high productivity, compared to the still-good 55% of less frequent AI using companies that were highly productive.
Which AI was the most common? ChatGPT, with 65% of businesses saying they used this particular generative chat bot.
Taken together, our report found that the efficiencies offered by AI could even help enable a 4-day workweek at companies – probably our favorite insight from this year’s inaugural report.
The percentages of respondents who reported high organizational productivity, split by their organization’s level of AI use. Image source: Tech.co
Productive Collaboration
The more collaboration tools a business uses, the more productive they are. Granted, that’s based on self-reports, but it remains surprisingly consistent across the total of 1,047 responses that we processed. Our survey found two statistics that indicate the benefits of higher numbers of collaboration tools for organizations that have found they need them.
3. 80% of businesses using 7 collaboration tools reported high organizational productivity
Four out of every five respondents that reports high levels of productivity at their organization said that they used seven different collaboration tools.
Seven was the highest number of tools we asked about, and 80% was the highest concentration of high-performing organizations. The second and third most popular amount of collaboration tools were six tools and five tools, respectively, which further suggests the benefits of working with multiple collaboration tools. When it comes to business collaboration technology, it seems, many cooks don’t spoil the broth.
4. Just 46% of respondents using 1 collaboration tool reported high organizational productivity
Our survey found that high-productivity organizations were also the least likely to use the fewest collaboration tools. Only 46% of these respondents said they used just one such tool, while 36% of them said they used none at all. This inversion of our previous statistic highlights how unlikely a high-performing company is to limit its collaboration software.
Taken together, these two statistics strongly indicate that the biggest tech changes a company can make in 2024 are also the most simple. Invest further in your team collaboration tools is a statistically likely method of getting more value out of the same team.
The percentages of respondents who reported high organizational productivity split by the number of collaboration tools used by their organization. Image source: Tech.co
Collaboration Tools Beat Communication Tools
In fact, collaboration tools even correlate with a higher organizational productivity than communication tools. We asked business leaders about both tools, and of those who said their organization was highly productive, more organizations had collaboration tools than had communication tools.
5. Only 32% of companies using 1 communication tool reported high organizational productivity
As mentioned above, 46% of companies using one collaboration tool reported high organizational productivity. In contrast, just 32% of the same companies said they used one communication tool.
If a successful organization is staying stripped-down, the single collaboration tool appears to promote a more successful team of workers than a single communication tool. Of course, adding more tools helps the most productive companies even more. Nevertheless, business leaders highly value communication tools, as we’ll explore with our next statistic.
Company Performance
Business leaders believe that communication technology will have the greatest impact on their company performance in 2024. Our survey offered a range of technologies to chose from — AI, 5G, virtual and augmented reality, even cyber-attacks — and communication technology rose to the top.
6. 46% of business leaders said communication technology will “highly affect” performance in 2024
That 46% response includes answers in the “high” or “very high” category of response.
In addition, when asked which techology would have the least impact, the respondents reaffirmed the importance of communication tools. Only 11% said they envisioned communication-related technology having a “very low effect” on their operations in 2024.
Click the full chart to see a larger view of all the technologies we asked about, along with how many business leaders felt those technologies would have a major impact on them moving forward.
This graph charts responses to the question: “To what extent will the following tech innovations impact your organization’s performance in 2024?” Image source: Tech.co
The Future of Workplace Productivity
What can we learn from these statistics? First, make sure to focus on the basics when promoting productivity. Make sure your team can collaborate and communicate with themselves, with other teams within your organization, and externally with your clients or customers. In addition, investing in AI can boost productivity. Finally, as our full report found, other key areas that can impact an organization are remote working options, which correlate with higher levels of productivity and easier staff hiring.
