A Ricoh report reveals that Spanish employees lose up to 15 hours per week on administrative tasks.
European business leaders acknowledge that administrative tasks and manual processes expose companies to unnecessary risks, yet very few take action to change the situation. In fact, employees say this overload continues to distract them from value-generating work. These are the conclusions of a new report conducted by Ricoh across six European countries: Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy.
Across these six markets, both employees and decision-makers agree that too much time is spent on low-value tasks. In Spain, one in five decision-makers (19%) believes that employees spend most of their working day on administrative tasks unrelated to their core role, a view reinforced by an even higher proportion of employees (29%) who say the same.
According to the study, employees in Spain spend an average of around 16 hours per week on five administrative tasks, equivalent to almost two working days lost each week on routine activities such as document management and manual processes. It is concerning that only 43% of employees say they spend most of their day on value-generating work.
The consequences go beyond lost productivity. Inefficient document management exposes organisations to operational and regulatory compliance risks. More than half of decision-makers (61%) and 51% of office workers have witnessed serious errors — or the risk of them — due to outdated or incorrect information caused by inefficient systems or processes over the past five years. Over the same period, 67% of decision-makers say their organisation has experienced or narrowly avoided a data breach or compliance incident linked to poor document management or missing documentation.
The five administrative tasks that cause the most daily frustration
Spanish employees report facing a range of avoidable daily administrative frustrations that quietly undermine productivity, such as having to re-enter the same information into multiple systems (30%), managing overloaded email inboxes (29%), searching for files across multiple systems or shared drives (32%), and manually updating reports (27%). Together, these issues drain both time and morale.
The consequences are serious. One quarter (25%) say their administrative workload limits productivity, and 20% believe it restricts creativity. Employees are also clear about what reducing this burden could deliver, including greater enjoyment at work through more creative tasks (28%), increased added value (28%), as well as improvements in their ability to make stronger strategic decisions (25%), solve more customer problems (21%) and speed up project delivery (21%).
Lack of action
Despite the impact, many employees feel the issue is not fully recognised. 27% of respondents say decision-makers underestimate the time lost to administrative tasks, 18% believe the burden is unfairly distributed, and perhaps most concerning, only 24% think their employer cares about their administrative workload. However, 62% of decision-makers believe new tools and systems have simplified workflows and reduced administrative burden in their organisation, and more than half (53%) think automation tools that eliminate repetitive manual tasks would have the greatest impact.
Spain and Europe do not have a talent or commitment problem, but rather an issue of how people’s time is used. When skilled professionals spend two days a week on repetitive administrative tasks, productivity is not the only thing lost: innovation is slowed, decision-making is weakened, and operational risks increase. Automation is no longer just about efficiency, but about competitiveness and resilience. Organisations that act now will unlock the true potential of their teams and be better prepared to grow in a strong and sustainable way, adds Josep Costa, Head of Automation Solutions at Ricoh Spain.
According to the report’s findings, administrative overload continues to resurface in different forms because little is changing. These tasks still represent an enormous loss of time.
Companies must act. The benefits are too significant to ignore, from improving employee wellbeing to boosting productivity and freeing up time for people to focus on the value-added work that drives growth. And beyond productivity, effective automation strengthens governance and reduces the risk of non-compliance by ensuring information is managed consistently and accurately. Something as simple as automating document management should be an easy win, concludes Costa.
