One in four US office workers are considering leaving their role because of the amount of admin required
One in four US office workers are considering leaving their role because of the amount of admin required
A study of 3,000 office-based adults found 46% feel overwhelmed by the volume of routine tasks in their day-to-day jobs, and 50% of these have looked for a new job as a result.
Drafting emails is the single biggest drain on time, cited by 34% of workers.
This was followed by reading emails (31%), updating data in spreadsheets (19%) and preparing reports (14%).
Others added that researching information online (17%) and analysing data (17%) were particularly time-consuming.
Despite the growing availability of automation, 43% have some help from AI tools but could do with more, while 33% rarely or never use any tools to support their role.
The research was commissioned by email assistant Fyxer between Nov. 21 and Dec. 1 2025 as part of its Admin Burden Index, which explores the productivity cost of routine tasks and how this hidden drain could stunt business growth.
It also emerged that 37% of those who feel overwhelmed by daily admin say it takes time away from their main responsibilities.
One in 3 find them repetitive and boring, and for 31%, the jobs pile up faster than they can do them.
Additionally, 55% have seen their workload increase over the past 12 months, and of those, they estimate 30% of this increase is admin-related.
As a result, 59% reported working longer than their contracted hours at least once a week, with 11% doing so every day.
On average, they reckon they work for nearly an extra hour.
The research, carried out by OnePoll, also explored email volumes, revealing workers receive an average of 48 emails a day and send 36 in return.
Further data from Fyxer’s platform also reveals that 40% of email activity takes place outside of working hours.
Writing and responding to emails alone takes up almost two hours of the average working day.
Top 10 admin tasks that waste the most time
- Writing or replying to emails
- Reading emails
- Researching information online
- Organising files/documents
- Analysing or summarising data
- Preparing reports
- Entering or updating data in spreadsheets or systems
- Managing to-do lists or task reminders
- Scheduling meetings or managing diaries
- Tracking project progress or deadlines
This story was produced by Fyxer and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
