European organisations are facing a growing gap between leadership awareness of administrative overload and the daily reality for employees, as Employees report that administrative duties continue to dominate their workday.
New research from digital services provider Ricoh Europe shows that office workers across six markets are still losing significant time to routine tasks, despite widespread acknowledgement among decision makers that manual processes undermine productivity and create unnecessary risk.
A quarter of office workers say most of their time is taken up by tasks outside their core roles – and decision makers are aware of the issue. The data indicates that employees spend an average of 15 hours each week on administrative work, which amounts to almost two full working days. Only 43% of office workers say they are able to spend most of their day on work that directly drives value.
Ineffective document management and outdated systems are contributing to compliance and operational risk across the region. Decision makers say their organisations have experienced or narrowly avoided data or compliance breaches linked to missing or mismanaged documents. Many office workers have also witnessed serious mistakes caused by outdated or incorrect information, contributing to a growing sense of pressure in day-to-day operations.
Daily Frustrations Undermining Productivity And Wellbeing
Administrative overload is cited as a factor that limits productivity and reduces creativity, while daily frustrations such as repeatedly entering the same data, handling overcrowded inboxes and searching across multiple systems for key documents continue to chip away at morale.
Employees say routine inefficiencies are quietly eroding their capacity to perform meaningful work. Many describe repeated obstacles including managing information across several platforms, manually updating reports and searching through poorly organised file systems. For some, this is directly affecting how motivated and creative they feel in their roles. Others point to lost opportunities to focus on strategic or customer-facing work that would bring greater satisfaction and connection.
Workers are also clear about what reduced administrative pressure could make possible. They link lower admin loads to improved enjoyment of work, more time for creative tasks and enhanced decision-making. Many believe it would enable them to deliver projects faster and resolve customer issues more effectively, suggesting that the current burden is having both human and commercial consequences.
Persistent Disconnect Between Leaders And Workers
A substantial proportion of employees feel their concerns are underestimated. Some say their admin duties are not fairly distributed and only a small share believe their employer genuinely cares about reducing their administrative load. This stands in contrast with leadership confidence in new tools and systems, with many decision makers believing workflows have improved even as employees report ongoing challenges.
“It’s clear there are major disconnects in organisations across Europe,” said Jason Spry, Process Automation Commercial Director at Ricoh Europe.
“Employees say they’re spending a significant amount of time on admin. Decision makers believe they are too. But workers don’t think leaders are aware, or if they are, that they are taking no action to address this. Meanwhile, a huge proportion of decision makers see the value of automation for simplifying admin, yet the time still being wasted shows that action simply isn’t being taken.”
Spry says that automation offers clear benefits for productivity, wellbeing and risk reduction.
“The admin burden story keeps reappearing in different forms because little is changing. These tasks remain a huge time drain. Businesses need to act. The benefits are too significant to ignore, from improving employee wellbeing to unlocking productivity and freeing up people’s time to focus on the value-add work that drives growth,” he said.