In 2026, employee retention and turnover remain the second most urgent HR challenge for European organisations, behind only employee wellbeing. Yet, few are paying enough attention to one of its biggest driving factors in how work is experienced day to day.
Retention issues are often driven less by talent and more by inefficient processes and low‑value work that erode motivation over time. Our research shows employees report losing 15 hours a week to admin outside their core job role, the equivalent to two working days.
Overloading roles with repetitive, low‑value tasks undermines motivation, drags down productivity and erodes long‑term role sustainability. And it’s why 14% of employees say they are considering leaving their job.
Real retention gains come from rethinking the work as well as the people doing it.
Retention starts with how work is designed
Retention strategies, understandably, often focus on pay, benefits and flexibility. But while important, these are surface level factors and mean nothing if how employees feel about their role and the company is being negatively impacted by a burden as time consuming and mundane as unnecessary admin. If the day-to-day experience of work is fundamentally flawed, surface-level incentives are unlikely to fix it.
FSo, it’s sad to hear that fewer than half of employees (43%) report spending most of their day on value-adding work. The rest is seemingly consumed by repetitive, low-value tasks, which offer little sense of progress or purpose. Technology has the ability to help address this problem, and it’s a natural route to turn to, but it can just as easily exacerbate the issue further.
When access to tools, training or automation is inconsistent, it can reinforce existing disparities. In some cases, it can even introduce additional complexity, leaving teams to navigate multiple different systems and expectations.
While many firms are rightly turning to AI and automation tools that promise reduced workloads and greater efficiency, technology on its own is not enough. Any new tool needs to be implemented in the right way to ensure it doesn’t reinforce or replace existing issues by adding to and creating new forms of friction.
Admin overload is a team-level issue
Admin burden becomes a wider organisational issue when low‑value work builds up unevenly across teams, driving frustration and perceived unfairness. In fact, 18% of employees in our research said admin responsibilities cause tension within their team. Therefore, what may seem like a minor operational issue can soon become a wider cultural problem that affects both collaboration and team morale.
Addressing this requires better visibility and accountability for how work is distributed across teams, led from the top. Understanding where admin is accumulating, and why, helps reduce them at source and rebalance workloads. By taking a more holistic view of how work flows across a team, leaders can ensure they’re aware of where time is spent, and when it’s being spent on meaningful, value-adding activities – andultimately when it’s not.
Closing the gap – how business should respond
If admin overload is already pushing 14% of employees to consider leaving, businesses can’t hang around. The timeline to addressing it must start now. It requires a conscious, deliberate shift in how work is designed and supported day-to-day, starting with a much more honest view of where time is really being spent across the organisation. Currently, there is a clear disconnect. Only 18% of workers feel their employer cares about admin overload, and a quarter believe it is underestimated.
Closing that gap requires visibility, starting by recognising the admin burden and working to build a clear picture of where it’s most prominent. In many cases, it sits in the gaps between teams and systems. From duplicated data entry across platforms to layers of approvals that have built up over time without being re-evaluated. These are not always immediately visible at leadership level, but they shape the day-to-day experience of work and are important to explore.
Taking this as a starting point will help organisations prioritise targeted changes that remove unnecessary steps, reduce duplication and streamline decision-making, rather than making sweeping transformations that don’t fully seed and make positive improvements. Small interventions, applied consistently, can have a disproportionate impact on how roles feel in practice.
Perhaps most importantly, technology should support that effort, not lead it. The emphasis should be on making immediate, tangible improvements to employees’ day-to-day work, and avoiding simply introducing additional layers of tooling.
Creating the conditions for retention
There’s no doubt that retention is impacted by how work feels and is experienced on a day-to-day basis, and too much time absorbed by admin plays a big role in that. For many, it’s enough on its own to consider leaving a role.
Reducing that burden requires a more deliberate approach to both job design and technology. Organisations that address admin overload directly, and use AI to support how work actually happens, will be better placed to retain talent and make full use of their people’s skills.
