ActiveTrak Study Underlines Enormous Workplace Waste
Supporting Gallup estimates of the high cost of employee disengagement, this study by a productivity analytics firm finds that US organization tracked by the study collectively waste $2.86 billion on underperforming staff.Click here to subscribe, and here for an RRN media kit.
The opportunity for performance improvement is both massive and measurable: 58% of workers underperform and organizations with the greatest underutilization rates stand to waste the equivalent of 1 in 5 workers’ salary in untapped capacity, according to this recent study by Activtrak, an Austin-based workforce analytics and productivity monitoring company.
To draw these and other conclusions, the company digital activity data from May 2025 across 5,619 organizations and 304,083 tracked workers. The company says “The analysis was based on established productivity goals and included representation across all business sizes and industries. The measurement was objective, relying on actual digital behavior rather than surveys or estimates.”
The company says that fFor every 1,000 employees, organizations lose the productivity equivalent of 130 workers (for an average of six hour, 50 mins of productive hours per day), costing $11.2M annually. A comprehensive analysis of 300,000+ workers across 5,619 organizations shows businesses receive only 87% of expected output while paying 100% of salary costs, the report notes.
According to the study, 58% of staff fall short of established productivity goals, totaling a collective $2.86B annually at the companies studied. And as business size grows, so does financial impact: Organizations with 251+ employees average 7 times in annual productivity losses compared to smaller organizations.
Other findings include:
- Organizations lose productivity equivalent to 130 workers for every 1,000 employees.
- Small organizations (0-250 employees) face a combined productivity loss of $1.4 billion.
- Mid-size organizations (251-1,000 employees) incur a productivity loss of $731 million.
- Large enterprises (1,001+ employees) experience a productivity loss of $695 million.
- Underperformance rates are 59% for small, 53% for mid-size, and 51% for large organizations.
- Aerospace has the highest untapped capacity (19%) and annual cost impact ($1 million).
- The government and public sector show the most significant shortfall in productivity goals.
- Logistics is the top performer with only 41% of workers below productivity goals and 9% untapped capacity.
- Computer hardware has the largest underutilization rate at 71%.
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