New Workday research reveals that ANZ workers spend at least half their time acting as the manual glue between disconnected systems. Here's how to fix it.
Jo-Anne Ruhl
Vice President and Managing Director
Workday ANZ
Ask someone in Australia or New Zealand how work is going, and "busy" is almost always part of the answer. Busy is good. Busy means employed, in demand, contributing.
Across the Tasman, people pride themselves on getting the job done, whatever it takes. It's one of the things I genuinely admire about the workforce in this part of the world.
But the real question is: busy doing what, exactly? Our calendars are clogged, our Slack and email channels are relentless, and the to-do list never seems to get shorter.
We may feel busy, but according to our latest Workday research, The copy/paste economy, much of that time is spent moving information between tools that don't talk to each other.
Report
The irony of this friction is that it isn't caused by a lack of worker motivation. In fact, our research shows a staggering 96% of ANZ employees report a positive experience at work.
They believe in the work, they believe in their organisations, and – perhaps most importantly for leaders right now – they believe in what AI can do.
In ANZ, 61% say AI reduces the time tasks take, and 85% say it is already improving their day-to-day work experience.
These are not sceptics. They are motivated, positive about their work, and already seeing real value from AI.
The problem is that too much of that value stops short. It gets trapped inside disconnected systems, and people are left manually bridging the gaps themselves.
For many ANZ professionals, the copy/paste economy has become a defining feature of the working day.
Pulling information out of one system and manually feeding it into another. Reconciling reports that should have agreed automatically. Trying to figure out which tool has the latest data.
None of this was in anyone's job description.
The scale of it is where ANZ stands apart. Around 30% of ANZ employees lose more than seven hours a week to this kind of work – tracking above the global average.
And the administrative burden runs heavier here than in most markets we surveyed: 75% of ANZ respondents say bureaucratic tasks create significant friction in their daily work.
Put simply, people are now acting as the glue between disconnected systems that were never designed to work together.
AI is delivering value, but too often from the edges of work rather than from inside the systems and workflows where work actually happens.
Sixty‑three percent of employees told us they spend at least half their time on this 'copy/paste' work, instead of doing the work they were actually hired for.
One IT Director described it in terms that will resonate with most of us: "Dealing with system glitches, chasing approvals and constantly fixing or redoing work because of inconsistent data – it keeps me busy, but doesn't feel like real progress."
The truth is, we don't have a productivity problem. We have an architecture problem. And our most engaged people are personally compensating for it, every single day.
When AI arrived, the expectation was that it would dissolve this kind of structural busywork and redirect human effort toward work that actually requires human judgment.
For many ANZ organisations, that shift is still incomplete.
AI is delivering value, but too often from the edges of work rather than from inside the systems and workflows where work actually happens.
Earlier this year, we shared research that identified what we called 'the productivity tax': roughly 40% of the time AI was supposed to save is spent reviewing, fixing and reworking AI outputs.
Our new research shows exactly why.
Most organisations have bolted AI onto the edges – a writing assistant plugged into email here, a chatbot stuck in front of a legacy portal there.
The outputs emerge, and a human is still required to collect them, verify them, and carry them across to the next system by hand.
The workflow has not changed. The AI has simply generated more content that needs to be manually moved around within it.
Only 30% of ANZ employees say their organisation has embedded AI directly into their core workflows.
The majority are running AI around the work rather than inside it – and the consequences show up precisely where the data is already most troubling.
Seventy-three percent of ANZ employees say decisions are delayed when information is missing or unclear. Sixty-four percent say their teams regularly disagree over whose numbers are right.
Applying AI to the edges of this environment does not resolve those disagreements. It risks accelerating them.
As another IT Director observed during the research: "A significant portion of the day is lost in meetings where the adoption of AI is discussed, but the discussion consistently revolves [around] simplistic justifications rather than practical choices."
That is what happens when organisations skip the harder question. Not 'where can we bolt on AI?' but 'where does work actually fall apart between our systems, and can AI own that gap?'"
People want an AI tool that is connected to the systems they already rely on.
The organisations seeing results are those integrating AI into the systems that already run the business, instead of leaving it alongside the work.
Here's how employees in ANZ are plugging those structural gaps with AI:
The difference in time savings between organisations that have made this shift and those that haven't is substantial.
Across the Asia Pacific and Japan region, employees in organisations with AI deeply embedded in core systems are 1.8 times more likely to report that AI has reduced task time by 25% or more, compared with those where AI is not used in core systems at all.
Same people. Same technology. The variable is where in the operating model the AI actually lives.
Another number from our research stands out: Ninety-one percent of ANZ employees agree that AI increases their confidence in decisions… when they trust the underlying system and data.
People want an AI tool that is connected to the systems they already rely on to run payroll, close the books, and make decisions that carry real consequences.
Let's remember what's at stake here.
ANZ employees are engaged, optimistic, and willing. They are also – right now, today – absorbing the operational cost of disconnected systems through personal effort and goodwill.
It's time to stop treating the workaround as the strategy.
They are doing it because they care about their organisations and the people they work alongside.
But goodwill is not an infinite resource.
When most professionals spend at least half their time translating between systems rather than applying the judgment they were hired for, you are gradually eroding the commitment of the people you can least afford to lose.
The organisations that close this gap first will work better (not just faster) and become the places people choose to stay.
It's time to stop treating the workaround as the strategy. Fix the foundation, connect the core, and let your people do the work that deserves their talent.
Methodology: Workday commissioned The Harris Poll to survey 6,100 finance, HR, IT, and operations professionals globally, including 150 in Australia and 100 in New Zealand, who all actively use AI at organisations with 500+ employees. The survey was conducted March 2–24, 2026.
Report
Why task-oriented AI is failing the enterprise in Australia and New Zealand.