What everyday workplace hassle is quietly eroding your company’s productivity? For many businesses in Australia and New Zealand, it’s the simple act of hunting for information. Employees spend countless hours each week searching through emails, digging in shared folders, or pinging coworkers with questions - all just to find answers they need to do their jobs.
It seems trivial, but the impact is massive. New Zealanders already work longer hours than workers in other OECD countries, yet produce far less output per hour ($68 vs $85). Across the Tasman, Australia’s productivity growth has slumped to its lowest rate in 60 years (theguardian.com).
Clearly, something is holding us back. One major culprit is hiding in plain sight: knowledge trapped in silos, fragmented systems, and “tribal” know-how that isn’t shared. In this article, we’ll unpack the hidden cost of all that inefficiency - and why it’s high time we tackle the problem head-on.
Too Much Time Spent Finding Information
One of the biggest drains on efficiency is the time lost just trying to find information. How often have you or your team wasted half the morning sifting through email threads or digging in a cluttered server for a document? It happens everywhere. In fact, various studies have found that employees spend 20–30% of their workday searching for information instead of doing productive work.
This problem shows up in all kinds of businesses:
- Multi-unit franchises often have staff and managers scrambling to find the latest policy update or marketing template buried in an intranet or email inbox.
- Mid-market construction or logistics firms see project engineers calling around to different departments for data that should be readily available - site plans, inventory levels, you name it.
- Insurance brokers and agents might have to comb through several systems just to retrieve a client’s history or an underwriting guideline.
The hidden cost here isn’t just in hours wasted – it’s in opportunities missed and a slower pace of business. When your team spends the morning chasing an answer, that’s time not spent on serving customers, closing sales, or improving operations. It also drags down responsiveness. For example, a client waiting on an answer might get fed up with delays, or a field worker might sit idle until they get the go-ahead from someone who is still looking up a detail. In competitive industries, this lost agility can be fatal. Simply put: if your people are constantly hunting for information, your organisation moves at a crawl.
Tribal Knowledge Bottlenecks
If information isn’t written down or centrally accessible, where does it live? Too often, it lives in someone’s head.
This is the realm of “tribal knowledge” - the unwritten know-how that only certain veterans or specialists possess. Relying on tribal knowledge can create huge bottlenecks. Work grinds to a halt when the one person who knows how to approve a special request or troubleshoot a legacy system is out of office.
Every organisation has examples of this. In a franchise network, a long-time franchisee might be the go-to for how to handle an unusual customer complaint. In a mid-sized firm, you often hear “Ask Bob, he’s the only one who knows how that system works.”
When that knowledge walks out the door, companies feel the pain in mistakes, rework, and slower ramp-up for new staff.
Repetitive, Low-Value Work Bogging Teams Down
All of these issues - hard-to-find info, tribal knowledge gaps, fragmented systems - lead to another outcome: repetitive, manual work.
A 2024 study showed employees waste 8.7 hours per week on low-value tasks such as admin and inefficient processes (thestepstonegroup.com.)
For a company of 50 people, that’s the equivalent of losing 10 full-time contributors each year.
In franchises, managers often compile reports by hand because systems don’t talk to each other. In construction, project updates require copy-paste from system to system. In insurance, brokers re-type info across insurer platforms.
Not only is this work demoralising - it’s error-prone, unscalable, and distracts from higher-value activities.
Why More Tools Aren’t Solving the Problem
Adding more tools hasn’t solved the problem - it’s often made it worse.
Without integration, each new app becomes another place to search. Many mid-market firms adopt tools with good intentions but poor execution.
And because 58% of NZ businesses struggle to create clear ROI models for AI or automation initiatives (Productivity Commission, 2022), they hesitate to invest in more robust fixes.
The Way Forward: Connected Knowledge and Smarter Workflows
Eliminating these efficiency killers isn’t about working harder – it’s about working smarter. The solution starts with connecting the dots: integrating knowledge and processes so that the right information finds the right people at the right time. Instead of your team hunting for answers, the answers should come to them with minimal effort. Achieving this requires a combination of cultural and technological shifts:
- Break down the silos
- Capture and share tribal knowledge.
- Streamline and automate repetitive tasks.
- Simplify processes and improve communication.
The key is to think in systems, not one-off fixes. Choose tools that integrate well, centralize knowledge in one accessible hub (like a wiki or intranet), and automate tasks to solve real pain points - not just to appear tech-savvy.
If more Australian and New Zealand businesses adopt integrated workflows and share knowledge effectively, productivity could rise significantly. Hours lost to “searching for answers” could be redirected to innovation and service. With growing support for digital transformation and accessible tools like cloud platforms and AI, the challenge now is coordinated implementation.
Operational inefficiencies - like hunting for info, navigating silos, or repeating manual tasks - drain time and energy. The solution is smarter systems and workflows that empower teams to focus on high-impact work. Addressing these gaps could be the edge that drives performance and unlocks your people’s full potential.
A Final Thought
The hidden cost of inefficiency is real - and in sectors like franchises, construction, and insurance, it’s magnified.
If Australian and New Zealand businesses want to close the productivity gap, reduce burnout, and move faster - tackling internal friction is step one.
You don’t need more tools. You need smarter ones that talk to each other - and a culture that makes knowledge accessible by default.
It’s time to stop hunting for answers - and start building organisations where the answers find you.
