Increasing Work Complexity: Identifying and Overcoming Work Dark Matter

I recently had an "Aha moment" while reading an article on physics and came across an interesting statistic from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. CERN claims that only 5% of the matter in the universe is visible to us. The rest is dark. I couldn't help but think the same could be said about work these days. With hundreds of messages, calls and files sent and received every day, we feel overwhelmed. At the same time, there isn't a lot of visibility into this work at the team or company level.

The digital age and the acceleration of remote and hybrid working over the past two years have made work more distributed, more mobile, and yes, more invisible and mysterious. I define the dark matter of work as the large amount of work that is not captured, tracked, or measured against goals because it takes place in communication tools and unstructured files.

The days when leaders and teams were able to provide instant feedback, resolve roadblocks in face-to-face meetings, and collaborate closely on progress are fast becoming a distant memory. Today, the increasing complexity of the way we work prevents business leaders from seeing more than a tiny part of the work of their employees. This, in turn, makes it difficult to give employees the right guidance and recognition they need to perform at their best. Is it any wonder that the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported the largest quarterly productivity decline since 1947?

Work becomes complex and unmanageable

Today's employees must juggle dozens of systems and applications to get their jobs done. They feel the gravitational mass of work in their stress levels, but there is no clear, unified record system for it. It travels through space and time in instant messages, video calls, and other unstructured means that are difficult to track, report, and scale.

At Wrike, we wanted to explore the impact of this new complexity and the severity of its impact on businesses, teams, and individuals. We commissioned a study, interviewed 2,800 business leaders and knowledge workers, and compiled a report called "Dark Matter of Work: The Hidden Cost of Work Complexities" to share our findings.

Understanding that the dark matter of labor exists, an important first step

Our research found that 61% of employees are stressed because they don't have all the information they need to do their job, and that up to 55% of the work done in an organization is not visible to key stakeholders. This costs companies up to $60 million per year in lost time, delayed or canceled projects, and lost employees (based on an average team size of 3,200 people).

Where is this low visibility coming from? The increased use of synchronous applications and other remote collaboration and communication platforms, as well as legacy systems, has created a vast amount of unruly and often hidden data, paths and workflows, against -productive in many cases and not intuitive. This lack of visibility makes it difficult for business leaders to track progress, provide guidance, and motivate employees, leading to missed deadlines, lower results, wasted opportunities, and an overall lack of productivity. Our report explores how to understand and identify the dark matter of work and, most importantly, how to start taking action to prevent it, making employees and organizations more productive and less stressed.

The human and material costs are real

The dark matter of work is a major source of stress for them...