“The complexity of this growing digital ecosystem leaves employees navigating a broken path to productivity, resulting in lost work time,” Masud wrote. “Organizations must grapple with delivering an effective digital experience to employees.”
Lagging US productivity
Masud’s observations about lagging worker productivity are backed up by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government organization found labor productivity, or output per hour, declining in six of 10 quarters between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2023, with a flat number in a seventh quarter. Worker productivity jumped by nearly 20% in the second quarter of 2020, when many employees began working from home, but those gains quickly leveled off.
Over the longer term, US labor productivity grew just 0.8% from 2010 to 2018, according to BLS. More recently, the US has seen five straight quarters of labor productivity growth since early 2023, with labor productivity growth often tied to investments in infrastructure, employee training, and technological advances.
