Workday study says AI tools cost workers a workday

Workday has published research on AI use in workplaces across Australia and New Zealand, finding that employees are losing nearly a full work day each week managing disconnected tools and systems.

The findings point to a gap between faster task completion and broader productivity. Many workers still spend hours checking outputs, switching between applications, and moving information manually between platforms.

According to the research, 61% of employees in Australia and New Zealand said AI is reducing the time it takes to complete tasks. Yet almost one in three, or 30%, said they spend more than seven hours a week copying information between applications, reconciling conflicting data, and feeding context into tools by hand.

At the centre of Workday's argument is that businesses are adding AI to existing processes rather than building it into the systems where work is already done. As a result, staff end up linking separate tools together themselves instead of seeing administrative work fall away.

The report describes this pattern as a "Copy/Paste Economy", in which employees act as the connection point between fragmented systems. The issue, it argues, is not a lack of value from AI at the task level, but the extra coordination work created when workflows remain split across multiple applications.

Time lost

The research found that 63% of workers in Australia and New Zealand spend at least half their effort translating information between systems and teams instead of doing what the report defines as value-creating work. Three quarters, or 75%, said administrative tasks create significant daily friction.

Decision-making also appears to be affected. The study found that 73% of employees said decisions are delayed when information is missing or unclear, while 64% said teams often disagree over whose numbers are correct.

Only 30% of respondents have AI embedded into core systems, according to Workday. The company argues that gains from individual AI tools are being eroded by the time spent verifying and reconciling outputs elsewhere in the workflow.

Workday presented the regional findings as more severe than those seen globally. It found that 75% of respondents in Australia and New Zealand reported friction from administrative tasks, compared with 70% worldwide.

Management focus

The sample was weighted towards senior staff, including directors, vice presidents, and C-suite executives, reflecting a focus on people involved in AI strategy and adoption. Respondents worked across human resources, finance, information technology, and operations in organisations with at least 500 employees and annual revenue of more than USD $100 million.

The survey covered 6,100 professionals globally, including 150 in Australia and 100 in New Zealand. All respondents were employed full-time and were active users of AI in both their organisation and their own role.

That profile suggests the findings reflect the experience of larger employers and decision-makers rather than the wider labour market. Even so, the results offer a snapshot of how AI is being used inside operational functions where process and data consistency are central.

For businesses, the message is less about whether workers like AI and more about whether deployments fit into everyday processes. The study suggests employees remain positive about the technology while also dealing with added layers of checking, transferring, and aligning information across systems.

Jo-Anne Ruhl, Vice President and Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, Workday, said the burden has shifted onto staff when systems do not connect well. "Too many employees are serving as the human middleware between disconnected systems," Ruhl said.

She said organisations that gain more from AI tend to place it inside the platforms where core work takes place. "The companies seeing the most value from AI are building it directly into the systems where their people, data, and work come together," Ruhl said.

The findings add to a broader debate over whether AI adoption is delivering measurable productivity gains at company level, particularly when organisations roll out multiple tools across separate functions. In this case, the data suggests that speed at the level of an individual task does not necessarily remove friction from the rest of the working day.

Instead, workers may complete one activity more quickly while losing time elsewhere through duplicated checks, inconsistent data, and manual handoffs between software products. That can leave organisations with a faster process in one area but no clear reduction in the total effort required to finish the job.

Within that picture, the report's central claim is that integration matters more than the number of AI features available to staff. Where systems remain fragmented, employees can end up spending as much time making technology outputs usable as they do benefiting from the original time saving.

The research found that nearly three quarters of employees in Australia and New Zealand said delayed decisions stem from missing or unclear information.