Productivity is under siege. And that siege has real implications, with Gallup estimating that lost productivity costs as much as $605M, an eye-popping number. A closer look at this productivity crisis reveals the productivity crisis manifest throughout the modern workplace:

• A 2022 Forrester Research survey indicated that employees spend about 30% of their time on manual workarounds due to disconnected technology. Slingshot's "2023 Digital Work Trends" survey showed that 72% of workers feel most productive when they have all of the data and information they need to do their jobs.
• According to Gartner, Inc., organizations can lose an average of $15 million annually due to poor data quality stemming from siloed information.

That lost productivity has a name. It’s called Gray Work, the tangled web of ad-hoc solutions and workarounds used to bridge gaps when technology or systems don’t work, leading to lost time and resources. It’s the extra, often unnoticed tasks that arise when technology and systems fail to meet the needs of their users or projects. Manual data entry, ad-hoc synchronization of information across disparate systems, and all that endless hunting for data in emails and spreadsheets.

Once you see it, you realize it’s not isolated to one project, team, or department; it’s everywhere, a productivity killer.

Gray Work: Not Just for IT or Creatives

Industries with complex, high-stakes projects, where physical operations meet digital processes, are especially prone to Gray Work. Shifting deadlines, complex supplier management and material procurement processes, managing a network of contractors, subcontractors, specialists, and day workers, all creating siloes of data and information… It's a perfect recipe for Gray Work.

Construction, with dozens if not hundreds of projects going on at once, generates tons of data and information flowing back and forth from job sites to trailers to regional offices and finally to central headquarters. Tons of information is captured in spreadsheets, core systems, paper forms and invoices, and word of mouth – all of it disconnected, creating data and information siloes, and opportunities for Gray Work to take root.

Consider this example: An ENR Top 100 General Contractor with nearly $3B in revenue and more than 1,600 employees and 13 regional offices, manages dozens of job sites and hundreds of projects. At any given time, a web of 650 skilled carpenters, laborers and masons, along with hundreds of other specialists, are busy on job sites or in trailers. Keeping these workers safe, and job sites compliant, according to OSHA guidelines, is the firm’s most important priority.

Anytime anyone sets foot on one of their job sites – regular workers, specialists, job site visitors, etc. – was required to fill out and sign paper documentation, following a safety orientation customized to each job site. Adding to the complexity, OSHA-required safety lessons and training changed frequently, prohibiting any kind of standardization of safety procedures and documentation across their portfolio of jobs.

Tons of paperwork, multiple “stop and check-in” moments, in-person meetings, logging and tracking forms by visitor, role, and site led to wasted time, too much paper, and disconnected information. The perfect ingredients for Gray Work to flourish.

Solving Gray Work

If any of the above sounds familiar, take heart: There is an answer to reducing Gray Work. It’s called Work Management, an approach that blends technology, connected data, improved workflows, and a laser focus on making work work better.

Getting there starts with answering a basic – but very big – question: How do you define productivity? In the old ways of working, where projects moved on a linear path, with fixed deadlines, limited stakeholders, and established workflows, productivity was a checklist-driven process. You could survive on paper alone.

Today, work moves too fast, in too many directions, with too many internal and external variables. Meanwhile, a “let’s get a software tool for that” approach has led to a sprawling, disconnected ecosystem of technology and systems that just don’t work together. That combination puts productivity at risk, making it harder for work to have an impact. Instead, a culture of “busy-ness” prevails: People work hard, yet they can’t make an impact. Defining productivity as work that leads to impact can be an “aha moment” that can fundamentally transform projects and teams, inoculating them from Gray Work.

With that moment comes the opportunity to examine the tools your employees use every day to make that impact. A recent Quickbase survey showed that nine in 10 workers feel overwhelmed by the number of tools and systems they are using to get work done. This is a byproduct of the “one tool for one problem” mentality of the rush to digital transformation, leading to a disconnected, sprawling IT environment where every team has their own set of tools that don’t allow for collaboration across the organization.

Integrating and simplifying the IT environment on a single platform is a key step. A low-code/no-code approach that requires little to no technical expertise to build apps for productivity and project visibility can unlock productivity.

Technology needs to make it easy to automate and then replicate the time-consuming tasks inherent in a paper-based environment, from manually rekeying information to trying to stitch together spreadsheets, emails, invoices and other disparate sources.

Addressing Gray Work

Let’s return to that ENR Top 100 GC and their OSHA paperwork challenge. Recognizing the opportunity to overhaul their safety documentation process, they sought to connect their systems into a single, centralized platform, customizable to the custom processes and automated workflows needed to capture and manage safety data for different roles, jobs, and sites.

Using a low-code/no-code platform, they quickly built a solution for their job sites to streamline safety data collection and management. Anyone visiting a job site now completes safety forms on their mobile devices, significantly reducing time spent on paperwork and improving data accuracy and accessibility.

Site supervisors can easily track who is on site as well as the necessary safety requirements, easily approving or rejecting access according to certifications, qualifications, weather or other factors – all from their own mobile device or tablet.

Plus, it’s very easy to customize by client, worksite, required equipment or safety gear, or for monitoring requirements like quality checks, site inspection walks, flexible and adaptable to the specifications of each job site. All with the confidence of full data visibility into their safety processes and data across unique sites, conditions, and events.

The firm has transformed its safety and compliance program, eliminating a crippling reliance on paperwork, unlocking flexibility to add new requirements or documentation for any job, and saving valuable time.

This is an example of how work management can unlock productivity and reduce – or even eliminate - Gray Work. Look for your own opportunities to identify Gray Work and seek out your own path to dynamic work management, unlocking the full potential of your teams, and ensuring that technology enhances rather than hinders productivity.