Fragmented workplace chats cost Australia AUD $4.46 billion

Corro has released research estimating that fragmented workplace communication costs the Australian economy AUD $4.46 billion a year. Its modelling suggests knowledge workers lose more than 75 million hours annually searching for workplace messages.

The figures are based on Australian responses from a broader survey of 2,553 workers across five countries, including a local sample of 502 respondents who use digital communication platforms for work. Applying the results to Australia's 6.3 million knowledge workers, the model estimates the average worker loses 12 hours a year searching for messages, equivalent to about AUD $710 in annual productivity per person.

The research points to a routine problem across offices and remote teams. It found 28% of Australian workers search across multiple communication platforms for messages every day, while more than six in 10 do so at least weekly.

Email remains a particular issue. More than half of respondents, 52%, said they struggle to find a specific email at least once a week.

Corro also highlighted knock-on effects beyond time spent searching. One in five Australian workers, or 21%, said they recreate work a colleague has already done at least weekly because the original could not be found.

Most respondents are expected to juggle several tools. The research found 89% use two or more communication platforms for work, while 52% said message volume reduces their ability to focus on important tasks.

Board concern

The findings also point to a governance issue as work shifts into consumer messaging services and private channels. Around 39% of Australian workers said they use personal messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal for work, while 25% said they rarely or never do so.

The strain appears more acute among senior staff. Corro found 62% of senior Australian workers switch channels at least weekly to chase down tasks, compared with 48% of junior workers.

Sara Goldsworthy, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Corro, said communication is often treated too narrowly inside organisations. "In most organisations, communication is treated as something that just happens. It gets filed under IT and managed as a cost. But it's the invisible engine that keeps everything and everyone connected, and should be considered a strategic capability and force multiplier."

She said fragmentation translates directly into business costs. "When that infrastructure is fragmented, every system built on top of it inherits the cracks. Communication breaks down, productivity suffers and Australian organisations lose time and money paying people to search for information."

AI limits

Corro argues that the spread of artificial intelligence across workplace systems may not solve the problem if information remains scattered across disconnected tools. AI systems can only draw on the data they can reach, which may leave outputs incomplete when knowledge sits in private threads or external apps.

Alan Davison, Head of Research and Capability, Corro, said the measured productivity loss captures only part of the impact. "The billions of lost productivity due to searching is only the part we can infer from the survey. The real cost is everything that doesn't happen: growth not pursued, decisions made on partial information, relationships left untended, ideas never surfaced," Davison said.

Goldsworthy also warned about information moving beyond organisational oversight. "A growing share of organisational knowledge now lives beyond the organisation's reach, leaking into personal apps, private threads, and channels with little oversight."

She added: "When an organisation's most sensitive decisions are being discussed on the same app as someone's family group chat, it has lost visibility and control of its own information. While consumer messaging apps are designed for personal privacy, they weren't built to meet the accountability, transparency and data sovereignty requirements of organisations."

On AI, Goldsworthy said the problem starts earlier in the stack. "If AI is introduced as another layer in the comms stack in the hope it will provide clarity and surface organisational knowledge, it will inevitably amplify the underlying problem. With much of the information sitting in apps the organisation doesn't even control, AI can only hand back something as fragmented as what it found."

Model details

Corro described the AUD $4.46 billion figure as an order-of-magnitude estimate based on survey responses and labour statistics, using an assumption of five minutes per search event. It also set out a range of AUD $2.68 billion to AUD $6.24 billion to reflect sensitivity in the model.

The survey measured two separate activities that were treated as additive in the model. The estimate uses a population-weighted mean hourly wage across occupational groups within the knowledge worker workforce.

Goldsworthy said the answer lies in changing workplace systems rather than placing more burden on staff. "You can't automate your way out of a structural problem. Get the foundations of your workplace communications right, and everything built on top gets stronger. For too long we've expected people to absorb the cost of broken communication. The opportunity now is to treat communication as the critical infrastructure it is, and to redesign it so people spend more time doing the work that matters."