When work gets in the way of work: Reclaiming organizational capacity

As current efforts to rethink unnecessary work appear to be falling flat, how can leaders and workers come together to reclaim organizational capacity for enhancing human performance?

It’s about more than optimizing performance and resources for current work. It’s about reclaiming worker capacity for net new work, improved well-being, and better responsiveness to market changes and challenges. Opening up worker capacity hinges on an organization’s ability to implement two key things: a new corporate mindset about how we define and value slack—unscheduled, unassigned time that workers have autonomy over how to use—and a new mechanism to evaluate the best path to reducing or streamlining the tasks and processes that create unnecessary work.

Only 22% of our survey respondents say their organization is highly effective at simplifying work, however. To address the challenges created by an overload of unnecessary work, organizations can pause to take stock of work based with outcomes in mind, applying a work design framework focused on two dimensions: horizontal collaboration, which fosters cross-functional input, and vertical empowerment, which clarifies ownership and accountability across all levels.

Where has all the organizational capacity gone?

Why are leaders and workers all so busy? What’s impeding organizations from making decisions, innovating, and improving both human and business performance outcomes?

It’s the complex decision-making that requires email chains 30 people deep. Old and outdated technology that needs constant, expensive maintenance to work properly, and doesn’t play well with newer, more advanced systems. It’s meeting overload, where people spend most of their day attending meetings about work rather than attending to the work itself. Even collaboration—which is generally considered a good thing—can be a distraction to achieving outcomes.⁶

Getting buried in nonessential work isn’t something that happens randomly; it accumulates over time as an organization becomes more complex. But to effectively address this deluge of unnecessary work in the interest of creating capacity, it’s important to first understand some of the current mindsets and mechanisms that create it.

• Leadership and worker mindset. Whether consciously or unconsciously, many leaders are in the habit of finding new tasks to fill every minute of their workers’ time, regardless of whether those tasks are making valuable contributions to achieving organizational goals.⁷ In fact, according to one study, 42% of workers say they spend half their time on busy work.⁸ But leader mindset alone isn’t the only contributor: Workers have also internalized the message that every minute of their time should be utilized. According to a recent survey by Visier, around 43% of workers say they spend more than 10 hours a week just trying to look productive rather than on valuable tasks.⁹

• Outdated or unexamined processes and work design. Asana’s “2022 Anatomy of work” report found that workers spent an average of 257 hours annually navigating inefficient processes, and almost the same amount (258 hours) on duplicative work and unnecessary meetings. That adds up to 12 workweeks per year.¹⁰ While some processes may have served a purpose or worked well in the past, process isn’t usually a one-and-done activity. Organizations that fail to update workflows can quickly find themselves mired in nonessential work.

• Additive versus subtractive mindsets and incentives. “Every organization is in the business of starting, maintaining, and stopping things. Most are really good at starting and maintaining, but poor at stopping,” said the chief information officer of one research lab in an interview with Deloitte executives. “Workers are overloaded with toil, all the little tasks that take up time and attention. If we want them to be innovative, we need to give them space by stopping stuff, reducing the toil burden.”¹¹ The rapid evolution of workplace technology and AI is a case in point: Every new tool or technology added to a worker’s toolbox increases the “toggle tax”—the amount of time workers spend switching between apps during the day. One study estimates that the average worker already spends 9% of their year—almost 200 hours—just switching between workplace apps.¹² Worker incentives are also often designed to encourage an additive mindset. When incentives prioritize the quantity of work over the quality of the outcomes, for example, workers may be encouraged to engage in tasks that are more easily measured regardless of how valuable they are to organizational outcomes.

• Collaboration overload. According to data collected over the past two decades, the time spent by managers and workers in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50% or more.¹³ While collaboration is generally regarded as a positive in the workplace, digital tools have made it easier than ever to create the kind of over-collaboration that bleeds critical time away from important work; for example, excessive emailing, too many meetings, or duplication of efforts. Meeting overload has significant financial implications. According to a survey conducted by transcription software company Otter.ai, time spent in unnecessary meetings could be costing organizations over US$25,000 per employee per year.¹⁴

Beyond understanding how noncritical work continues to accumulate, freeing up worker capacity will also require leaders to navigate tensions—in particular, between outputs and outcomes, and control and empowerment (figure 2). Leaders will need to make strategic decisions about how to balance these tensions as they strive to create slack for their workers.

Optimizing work isn’t enough. It’s time to rethink ‘slack.’

Not all busywork is bad, of course. Sometimes rules and regulations can provide guardrails that protect against decisions that could have serious consequences. For example, highly regulated industries may have compliance requirements that seemingly create excessive administrative work but are designed to protect consumers or uphold ethical standards. And even the most mindful innovation and collaboration will create some transactional cost—after all, teams still need to communicate with colleagues on a regular basis; otherwise, a sense of camaraderie and connection may be lost and progress toward goals may be hindered.

Simply identifying and weeding out nonessential work is likely not enough to solve the issue on its own. The missing ingredient in the equation has been—and continues to be—the accompanying mindset shift around what should be done with the resulting freed-up worker capacity. In other words, how should workers be spending their time?

If the use of the word “slack” in this article gives you pause, you’re in good company. Many leaders equate it with “slacker”: someone who avoids anything that requires work or effort. But if we want a long-term solution to worker capacity, we need to reframe how we define—and value—slack.

Consider this analogy: In rock climbing, keeping slack in the rope that supports the climber is a critical practice that ensures the climber’s safety. It gives the climber the flexibility to move freely and prevents excessive wear and tear on the rope itself, which could lead to damage or failure in an unexpected event like a fall. And when something unexpected does happen—a foot slips or a rock breaks away—the slack in the rope allows it to stretch and absorb some of the force, reducing the impact on the climber.

Think about slack in the workplace in the same vein. Creating slack is not about giving workers opportunities to shirk responsibility, but rather giving them space to manage their responsibilities in ways that work for them and the business. Slack is the intentional creation of unscheduled, unassigned time in the workday that workers have complete autonomy over how best to use. 

The benefits of balance

The real benefits of slack will likely emerge when leaders are able to let go of the belief that emerged during the Industrial Revolution that their job as leaders is to maximize worker utilization. Some organizations have had success over the past few decades in working to shift this mindset and recognize the value of slack in work design.

Google’s well known 80/20 policy, for example, famously encouraged Google employees to spend 80% of their time on core projects, and roughly 20% (or one day per week) on unplanned company-related innovation activities that interested them personally. Almost half of Google’s product launches, including Gmail, Google News, and AdSense, have been reported to originate from this extra “slack” in workers’ schedules.¹⁵

Likewise, at 3M, workers maxed their utilization at 85%, customizing the rest of their work time as long as they stayed within the strategic boundary of working on projects they felt had the greatest potential to create value for their organizations.¹⁶

Missing out on the value of slack could be a particularly risky mindset as gen AI and other advanced technologies are poised to take over many transactional tasks that can free up worker capacity. If we expect to fill every second created with more busywork—or even with more complex, critical work—we have fundamentally misunderstood the assignment. The assignment is to find the balance.

In particular, as AI takes over more tasks, workers will be increasingly asked to invest in work that requires critical thinking, innovation, collaboration, and meaningful human interaction. Creating space for those activities—and offering workers autonomy in managing them—improves engagement with work and reduces job-related burnout. Extra capacity also can be used to invest in individual development like skill building.

Consider Belgian company DPG Media as an example. DPG only schedules 80% of a team’s capacity with work. What do they do with the remaining 20%? Nothing. The buffer is meant to give workers the ability to accommodate any unexpected issues. If worker utilization was maximized at 100%, DPG says, unexpected work would lead to excessively long workdays and hours of overtime.¹⁷

But reclaiming worker capacity can’t be an exercise that benefits only the organization. When workers benefit, the organization also benefits. Improved worker well-being, for example, often leads to improved retention and business outcomes. In our 2025 survey, workers listed flexibility, well-being, time off, and learning new skills—all of which are facilitated when organizations create slack—among the top 10 motivations that drive them to perform at a high level. Reclaimed capacity can benefit both workers and organizations: One does not need to come at the expense of the other.

For example, health insurance company Medibank launched a four-day workweek experiment in 2023, using a 100:80:100 model: Workers received 100% of their pay, worked 80% of their hours, and were expected to maintain 100% of their productivity. The company worked to reduce low-value work to give the extra hours back to workers—calling the reclaimed time “the gift” and allowing workers to use the time any way they chose. Midpoint results of the experiment were promising: Productivity and performance levels remained the same, and worker turnover intention and absenteeism dropped dramatically while workers experienced a 9.6% reduction in job stress and a 13% improvement in overall health.¹⁸

Similarly, Salesforce’s cloud-based communications platform, aptly named Slack, recently invited employees to join a two-week experiment where they were instructed to take regular breaks from their work throughout the day and use that time however they wanted to. Over the course of two weeks, productivity scores increased by 21%; scores related to worker ability to manage stress increased a whopping 230%; worker focus increased by 92%; and overall satisfaction at work increased 63%. Even participants who didn’t take as many breaks still saw increased metrics.¹⁹ 

Reworking work

If creating slack can help workers and organizations reclaim capacity for investing in the outcomes that matter most, the practical question remains: Where do we begin? How can organizations find the slack that their workers need to perform at their best?

To start finding slack, organizations can think about challenging existing work processes by hitting pause and taking some time to evaluate their most important outcomes. This allows organizations to evaluate each task for a given role, project, or team and identify opportunities to reduce or automate certain activities, ideally leading to performance gains and more effective use of resources.

This kind of reset can be aided by implementing a framework for the reset that is both horizontal and vertical in nature. Horizontally, it’s about expanding reach—getting teams to collaborate across functions and borrow ideas from other areas. This kind of cross-pollination brings in fresh perspectives and helps break down silos. Taking a page from finance and learning from zero-based budgeting, for example, could help organizations reevaluate the tasks that are most important for achieving goals and outcomes.

Vertically, it’s about cocreating the redesign of work with workers at all levels of the organization. After all, who knows the work better than those who actually perform it? Engaging workers in the process of determining what work should be done and how it should be done can have a positive impact on employee engagement.

This horizontal and vertical framework and mindset that can help organizations ensure that they’re focused on the right work and the right outcomes, that they capture and “spend” the capacity created in the most impactful ways, and that they guard against unnecessary work creeping back into processes, losing the hard-won capacity gains.

An example of this process in action can be observed in the story of how Great Britain’s men’s eight rowing team course-corrected their mediocre competitive performance. After years of following the same processes, the same practices, and the same mindsets, they decided to streamline their efforts and focus on a single goal: making the boat go faster. As they prepared for competition, the team started evaluating every activity and addition to their practice routine with the question, “Will it make the boat go faster?” Any time the answer wasn’t “yes,” the activity was phased out. The result was a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics.²⁰

Finding the slack

This horizontal and vertical approach to reworking work is not the process reengineering of old; rather than top-down process redesign, it involves workers from the start. A work assessment is a prime opportunity for workers and leaders to collaborate on the task of addressing nonessential work. Often, the workers who are closest to day-to-day processes and how work actually gets done are in the best position to identify specific areas where this work is inhibiting performance. But only about a third of workers in our survey say they feel empowered to provide feedback about how to make their work more valuable (figure 3). 

How can leaders and workers work together to identify noncritical work and create slack, and how can organizations build worker trust in the process?

• Use workforce data to identify value-added and value-robbing activities at a task level. Workforce data can help identify—and prioritize—the skills and tasks that are truly necessary to achieve strategic outcomes and help target tasks that can be reimagined, stopped, automated, or augmented. For example, when German energy company Dortmunder Energie- und Wasserversorgung GmbH wanted to improve its customer service function, it identified case processing as a task that consumed much of its worker capacity. In response, the team developed AI collaborators to process hundreds of thousands of standard cases, freeing up workers to handle more complicated cases and customers.²¹
• Help workers identify and understand the value of their roles and where efficiencies can be gained. Process maps and job descriptions rarely capture the full truth of how everyday work gets done. Simple tools informed by workforce data, like job canvases—visual tools that map out and define the key responsibilities, skills, impact, and value of a particular role—can expand worker and leader visibility into that role. Empower workers to lend their firsthand experience to build out accurate job canvases. The canvases can be used to discuss and consolidate opportunities to improve the work being performed by certain roles.
  
  As an example, nonprofit health system Providence Health deconstructed its nursing role and discovered that while the job included many “top of license” tasks (those that utilized the nurse’s high-level medical skills), it also included many tasks that others without specialized training could perform. Highly trained nurses were spending a significant amount of time on basic tasks like taking patient temperatures and recording information on hospital charts. Not only was this costly, but it also affected the nurses’ engagement and job satisfaction. To solve this problem, Providence created a new patient attendant role that delegated these tasks to student nurse assistants, not only freeing up the time of the most qualified nurses but also creating a pipeline of future skilled nurses in the process.²²
• Make AI your ally. When used responsibly, AI can help reduce time-consuming work by identifying and addressing inefficiencies in workflows and processes. AI algorithms can uncover bottlenecks, manage and integrate diverse data sets, and provide predictive analytics for proactive decision-making. JPMorgan Chase, for example, uses AI to take on the time-intensive tasks of financial document interpretation and analysis, revolutionizing how its finance division operates.²³

Keeping the slack

Perhaps just as challenging as finding slack is resisting the tendency to want to fill the newfound capacity with more work. But doing so without careful consideration will only allow unnecessary work to creep back into the system, undoing any progress you’ve made in freeing up worker capacity. This is where leaders can play an important role as the drivers of organizational culture. Guarding reclaimed capacity means supporting from the top efforts to shift to a human performance culture that values outcomes over outputs. And it means being committed to continuous assessment and ongoing iteration.

• Cocreate new metrics with workers that focus on the outcomes defined in the work reset. Transparency about what outcomes are being measured can encourage workers to focus on the work that matters and remove or reduce unnecessary tasks from their work. For example, online retailer Zappos set an outcome for superior customer service. Rather than evaluating its call center agents on how quickly they resolve an issue, its metric is how satisfied the customer was with the interaction—regardless of how long it took.²⁴ During the pandemic, Zappos even encouraged its agents to take calls on any topic, including helping people deal with issues related to the pandemic.²⁵ Outcomes-based metrics should also be implemented in your organization’s performance management approach, to ensure that workers are evaluated on the right outcomes.
• Make work resets an ongoing process. Reworking work is not a one-time event: It requires continuous effort to ensure that the necessary culture and mindset shifts around the value of slack become embedded in how your organization operates. While implementing a continuous work reset process may seem daunting at first, remember that it doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing approach. You can begin by identifying the workforce subsets where a work reset would likely have the most impact based on your priorities and goals. Begin with annual assessments that are included in your overall annual workforce planning efforts. If you can establish a shift in mindset through that annual focus, it can be nurtured into an organizational culture that continuously assesses work to enhance performance.

The renowned early-20th-century management consultant Peter Drucker once said, “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.”²⁶

This insight speaks to the heart of something many organizations may overlook: Efficiency doesn’t fully deliver if it’s applied to the wrong tasks. It’s easy to get stuck in outdated processes and practices. But what if we paused to assess what truly drives value? When organizations embrace slack, they’re not just clearing away noise; they’re creating room for fresh ideas, better performance, and healthier workers and work cultures. In the end, embracing slack isn’t just a strategy for reducing inefficiency. It’s a strategy for growth.

Because when organizations free their workers from busywork, they can create capacity to get busy with the right work.