We’ve never been so well-equipped to collaborate and be more productive, but the numbers don’t bear this out.

It’s well known that collaboration is more a matter of practices than tools, but businesses seem to persist in believing that technology is self-sustaining.

But nothing can be done: tools are piled on top of each other and misused (Collaborative tools in the workplace: a real waste?), causing real damage (Digital Infobesity: When Collaboration Tools Degrade Productivity, QWL and Amplify Mental Workload).

Zoom has just published a report that paints a bleak picture.

Note: when a study is sponsored by a business with something to sell, there is of course always a hidden commercial message, but that doesn’t detract from the reality of the figures.

Meeting and application overload

Collaboration is often hampered by too many meetings and too many applications. Executives and managers who use more than 10 applications spend on average twice as much time solving collaboration problems as those who use fewer than five.

This leads to “hidden time-wasters” due to meetings that lack clarity or purpose, at a significant cost in productivity. For example, for a business with 1,000 employees, if a third of managers spend an hour dealing with a problem caused by ineffective collaboration, the annual cost is $874,000.

Once again, we have proof that the multiplication of tools disperses attention and hampers collaboration, and that meetings are unfortunately used for everything but collaboration.

Instant messaging is the leading collaboration channel

Instant messaging is favored by employees and managers alike for its speed and efficiency, beating out face-to-face meetings, which, while recognized for their benefits in terms of creativity and connection, are considered time-consuming.

Among asynchronous tools, employees and managers particularly appreciate project management tools and shared documents, which enable flexible collaboration without the need for constant synchronization.

Younger generations (Millennials and Gen Z) show an increased preference for these asynchronous methods.

A little surprising given the overuse of email and mailing lists, but the younger generation’s taste for asynchronous collaboration is a real issue, not because it’s inefficient, but because of the differences in practices with others, which can keep everyone locked into their own channel.

AI has a positive impact on productivity

Teams using AI tools report notable productivity gains. Managers using AI report completing tasks faster (+7% year-on-year), being more productive (+6%), and delivering higher quality work (+5%).

AI is particularly appreciated for asynchronous collaboration, helping to organize information sharing, automate follow-ups and simplify content creation (such as meeting summaries).

I remain a little skeptical, however, when it comes to AI-driven productivity gains.

Firstly, becausean individual productivity gain doesn’t mean a collective or process-level gain (AI in the workplace: going beyond augmentation to actually transform) and secondly, because accelerating a dysfunctional organization only sends you into the wall at greater speed (AI Reasoning Is Cool, But First How Can We Tackle Organisational Debt).

But since Zoom has included AI in its products, this speech comes as no surprise.

Generational differences have an impact on working methods

The report shows that collaboration preferences vary by generation: Baby Boomers prefer face-to-face meetings, while Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z are turning to more flexible, digital tools. Gen Z is the generation most likely to favor instant messaging exchanges for their speed and efficiency, to the detriment of physical meetings.

According to the study, this divergence underlines the importance for businesses to offer a range of collaboration tools and methods to suit different generational preferences, which is surprising given that it also says that too many tools is detrimental to collaboration.

And while each generation has its own preferences, if we don’t want everyone talking in their own silo, it might be preferable for the business to impose clear, educational governance that explains which tool is most appropriate for which use and in which context.

In any case, over and above questions of collaboration and productivity, I see this as the cause of a deeper human problem (La Solitude des Seniors dans les ESN : Réalité ou Déconnexion avec la Nouvelle Génération ?).

Failure to collaborate has a cost

The costs of poor collaboration are high, not least because of the time wasted resolving internal communication and coordination problems. Almost 37% of managers and 27% of employees spend at least one hour a day dealing with collaboration issues, such as meetings without results, project follow-ups or team misunderstandings.

Each hour spent sorting out these problems can represent a significant annual loss for businesses, reaching $16,491 per executive or manager, for example.

Nothing really new here, even if it hasn’t prompted businesses to streamline their practices.

A few suggestions for better collaboration

The study concludes, of course, with a few recommendations where the software publisher’s finger is clearly on the pulse.

• Application reduction: Consolidating tools to reduce complexity and avoid application burnout is crucial. A single platform offering various functionalities (messaging, project management, shared documents) could reduce the problems associated with an excess of applications.

What a surprise, given that this is what Zoom is trying to sell now that it has bought out Workvivo and is trying to attract former Workplace customers (The end of Workplace by Meta: how serious is it?).

Promoting asynchronous tools and AI: Encouraging the use of asynchronous collaboration tools, especially with AI features, could free up time for more strategic activities. Solutions such as generative AI can also compose summaries and follow-up messages to lighten managers’ workloads.

When you’re selling hammers, you like all your problems to look like nails.

Adapting to generational preferences: Understanding employees’ preferences according to their generation would enable businesses to optimize working methods and encourage more judicious use of collaboration tools.

Unless it recreates generational silos that start in the tools and spill over into real life?

Bottom line

There are three things I take away from this study.

The first, unsurprisingly, is that it’s a marketing document that needs to be debunked. Yes, technology makes it possible to do lots of things, but the levers of productivity lie elsewhere (Remote work and productivity: what if we rethought the real drivers of efficiency?).

Secondly, as we all know, technology used improperly not only doesn’t solve problems, it creates new ones.

The third is the risk of generational isolation, which can start with the tools and then spread to real life.