Fixing broken workplace practices requires a technology rethink

The past five years have seen a rapid uptake of collaboration technologies as organisations strived to improve information flows and employee productivity.

Despite good intentions, many workplaces remain stuck in the past. Consider how Australia’s workforce productivity growth slumped to 3.7 per cent in 2023; while the desire to improve productivity and support innovation is there, the results speak to a different outcome.

One factor holding back productivity growth has been the failure to consider how technology should support collaboration efforts properly.

Broken processes and breaking workers

According to the State of Work Innovation: Australia 2024 report by work management platform company Asana, inefficiencies such as broken meeting processes, outdated collaboration practices, fragmented technology, and the lack of AI fundamentals are holding organisations back from becoming more innovative and productive.

These problems were identified in many ways, including how workers and managers dreaded two-thirds of their meetings due to the lack of clear purpose, relevance, and actionable outcomes.

The report also found that while many organisations had implemented tools to streamline collaboration processes, these too failed to meet expectations, with 40 per cent of workers believing they lacked clarity in their use.

The result of these and other challenges was that 89 per cent of were left feeling exhausted, due to wasted time and the effort of switching between tools.

Charting a path to innovation 

One area of hope for supporting productivity and collaboration is the use of AI, with 63 per cent of executives enthusiastic about employees using AI at work.

An example would be Asana’s AI Teammates, which provides a set of adaptable AI collaborators designed to tackle complex workflows and elevate teamwork.

Currently in beta release, AI Teammates can advise on priorities, power workflows, and even take action, their customisable nature means they can adapt to the unique ways that individuals and teams work.

Asana’s proprietary data model, The Work Graph, further means AI Teammates can link work and workflows to strategic company objectives, so they can collaborate with people and act within the relevant context and rules of engagement.

For example, an advertising company can use AI teammates to transform the creative process by triaging incoming requests and proactively gathering missing information, assigning work to specific people based on context, assisting with initial client research, and improving reporting quality with consistent data. This allows people to focus on tasks such as creative flow and design.

This capability is supported by a recently released AI chat interface which provides intelligent conversational assistance to help people solve problems and complete tasks faster.

Solving challenges today

We mentioned earlier how the challenge of improving workflows and collaboration is widespread. The good news? There is also a range of approaches to tackle them.

Asana’s State of Work Innovation: Australia 2024 report suggests numerous approaches that can be adopted today, such as fixing meetings by establishing clearer objectives and adopting a systemic approach to gathering and assessing feedback.

Similarly, collaboration tools can be improved by clarifying roles, identifying bottlenecks, highlighting efficient practices, and discovering and documenting collaboration behaviours that could become best practices.

Tools usage can be further improved by examining the redundancies, gaps, and opportunities within existing toolsets, providing the foundation for an organisation-wide tech stack suited to the practical needs of workers.

Numerous organisations are already tackling productivity issues by improving workflows and collaboration using Asana. We take cloud-based accounting software provider Xero as an example. It uses Asana to centralise communication and accommodate to all teams and working styles, effectively managing both project execution and high-level goal setting.

Meanwhile, at the German meal-kit company HelloFresh, Asana has increased productivity by 33 per cent for more than half of its team members while reducing friction in cross-functional team collaboration, allowing the company to innovate on recipes faster.

And at the spend management company Coupa, adopting Asana into its project management office in 2020 led to a saving of 135 workdays per year by eliminating silos and uniting work across teams. Coupa now has an organisational roadmap that speeds up projects from request to delivery, supporting its business growth objectives.

Asana is helping organisations discover the benefits of work management by offering a solution trial. If you’d like to learn more about ways to fix broken work practices or drive innovation and productivity, speak with an Asana sales representative today.