The promise of the digital workplace is that it will be the single place where our working lives take place: where we work, collaborate, socialize, engage…

For a long time, it was all about tools, but now that the issue seems to have been settled (when there is almost no competition on tools, the question of choice disappears), we can finally start talking about uses.

And when we talk about uses, we talk about work, and it’s healthier to stop talking about how to talk about the digital workplace and focus on what we do there.

On this subject, I was recently rereading the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2023 (Work Trend Index Annual Report – Will AI Fix Work?) and I read that employees spend an average of 57% of their time in Microsoft 365 communicating (meetings, messages, emails), compared to only 40% working in office tools, i.e. creating documents.

We are talking about time spent in Microsoft 365 and not total time spent at work, but it still made me wonder whether producing documents was really work or, in any case, whether it was always work.

Creating documents has indeed become a dominant activity in most businesses, but aren’t we sometimes maintaining an illusion of activity when we do so?

• The digital workplace is now less about tools and more about actual usage.
• Document production has often become an end in itself, creating confusion between the work medium and the work itself.
• Digital bureaucracy leads to document inflation, which dilutes productivity despite the promises of digital tools.
• Document creation is frequently used as a mechanism for personal protection within organizations, to the detriment of action and tangible results.
• To restore meaning to work, it is essential to question the usefulness, contribution, and lifespan of each document before producing it, in order to prioritize impact over formalization.

Confusion between work and its medium

Initially, a document is a medium used to organize, formalize, and transmit information. Its purpose is to prepare or support work, but it is not in itself the work, which is the result of actions carried out on the basis of the information contained in the document.

However, I eventually realized that in many organizations, the production of documents had become an end in itself.

Writing a memo, giving a presentation, or producing a report became an objective in itself, even when there was no real use for them.

Delivering a memo, posting a presentation on Teams, or sending a report by email became an objective, even when there was no real use for them.

When document production takes up more time than actual production, this inevitably raises questions about efficiency.

Document inflation: a symptom of digital bureaucracy

This is nothing new. In 1955, British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson formulated the law that bears his name:

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

In the digital workplace, Parkinson’s law translates into document inflation. The more complex an organization becomes, the more documents it generates, often not to take action but to give the illusion that it is taking action or even to justify the existence of certain functions dedicated to control.

Notes become proof of thought. Roadmaps become a substitute for delivery. Reporting becomes a way of showing that a service exists and is functioning, regardless of its actual impact.

And the more documents we produce, the more time we waste searching for them and separating the wheat from the chaff.

Digital workplaces, sold as productivity tools, are in fact nothing more than accelerators of document production and distribution.

A 2012 McKinsey survey showed that employees spend an average of 19% of their time looking for information or documents necessary for their work (The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies). In 2023, a Forrester study put the figure at 30% (Knowledge Workers Lose 30% of Time Looking for Data: Forrester Study), and in 2025, Atlassian said much the same thing, with 9 hours per week (Digital hide-and-seek’: Workers are wasting hundreds of hours a year sourcing the information they need to carry out their role), proving that nothing has improved despite the so-called improvements made to tools.

Nine hours per week are spent not working but suffering the effects of document overproduction.

Today, performance is measured more by the ability to produce evidence that we have tried to do something than by the actual impact.

In the same way that presenteeism values being in the office more than what you do there, there is a kind of culture of formalism that consists of showing that you are working rather than making progress on what matters.

Working means transforming, not documenting

Working is not about producing materials, or at least it shouldn’t be. On the contrary, it is about transforming knowledge and information into action.

Writing a customer service procedure does not in itself improve the customer experience, drafting a project plan does not result in the delivery of a project, and taking minutes of a meeting is useless if no action is taken.

A document is only useful if it is put into action: if it triggers a decision, guides its execution, or serves as a basis for productive collaboration. Otherwise, it is just a document that takes up space and adds to the information overload.

As Peter Drucker said:

“There is nothing more useless than doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Documents as personal protection

In a climate of uncertainty and a complex environment, producing documents is a way of protecting oneself.

By documenting, producing notes and presentations, and thus showing signs of activity, an employee can seek to protect themselves from possible future criticism: “I informed,” “I formalized,” “I passed it on.”

It doesn’t matter if nothing came of it, if no action or decision was taken: the trace exists.

This is what sociologist Michel Crozier described in “The Bureaucratic Phenomenon” (1963):

“The proliferation of rules, documents, and procedures allows individuals to protect themselves, but it hinders collective action.”

In the modern digital workplace, this dynamic has simply shifted from physical paperwork to virtually unlimited digital documentation. As always, digital technology has fulfilled its purpose: to do things faster and on a larger scale. It doesn’t matter whether these things are useful or not.

The amplifying effect of collaboration tools

Collaborative tools such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Notion, and Confluence have brought immense gains in flexibility, but they have also increased the temptation to produce documents at low cognitive cost.

Worse still, the arrival of generative AI will only facilitate this trend towards document production: since text can be generated in a matter of seconds, why not do so?

Adoption initiatives place so much emphasis on using the tools that we have forgotten why we should use them in the first place.

Creating a document, making a new version, commenting, sharing, and recirculating it has become as simple as a click.

The result is that we multiply iterations, validations, and drafts without ever asking ourselves what the document is for.

According to a study by Asana (Anatomy of Work 2023), 60% of working time is now taken up by what they call “work about work”: searching for information, coordination, follow-up discussions, documentation.

Less than half of the time is actually spent on tasks that add real value.

Bottom line

We are facing a rather paradoxical situation: never have tools made it easier to create documents, and never has the need to sort the useful from the superfluous been so great.

Creating a document is not work. At best, it is supporting work that must go beyond it; at worst, it is feeding a bureaucratic machine that stifles work under an avalanche of slides, notes, and processes.

Visual credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)