Shadow work, the invisible tasks employees juggle outside their core responsibilities, is quietly draining global productivity. New research by Perk puts a price tag on the problem, and companies are now accelerating automation investments to reclaim lost hours and reduce burnout.
Businesses are wrestling with mounting administrative friction as teams navigate travel bookings, expense claims, invoice coding, approvals, and other routine workflows. While individually small, these tasks accumulate into a measurable drag on efficiency, morale, and innovation capacity. The latest industry study quantifies just how serious the impact has become, and why digital, AI-enabled platforms are emerging as a frontline solution.
A Hidden $1.7 Trillion Productivity Drain
Shadow work refers to non-core tasks employees perform that fall outside their primary roles. Travel management platform Perk, formerly TravelPerk, commissioned Forrester Consulting to examine the scale of this burden, surveying more than 700 senior leaders across finance, HR, IT, and operations and over 8,000 employees across the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
The study estimates that businesses lose $1.7 trillion annually to these invisible tasks. In the UK alone, employees report spending roughly nine hours per week on shadow work, with productivity further dampened by cognitive switching costs, an average of 12 minutes of lost focus every time they return to primary work.
The research highlights the scope of the problem across UK respondents:
- 76% handle shadow work during normal hours
- 50% say it is the leading contributor to burnout
- 59% report it has increased year-over-year
- 52% say it reduces job satisfaction
- 75% would welcome AI tools to reduce the load
According to the study, 71% of UK decision-makers plan to reinvest time savings from automation into innovation and growth initiatives, signaling a shift away from manual, fragmented back-office processes toward integrated digital workflows.
Avi Meir, CEO and Co-Founder of Perk, says the research validated what the company saw across business travel workflows. “Those small, frustrating tasks people do outside of their core job weren’t just hiding in travel; they were everywhere,” Meir said in an official statement. “To truly solve the problem, we first had to grasp its scale, and the numbers from the research surprised even me.”
AI Steps In as Administrative Loads Surge
The surge in shadow work is accelerating investment in automated workflow platforms that consolidate routine tasks like travel booking, expense filing, invoice coding, and approval routing. Rather than stitching together point solutions, many enterprises are moving toward unified systems that can automate policy enforcement, reconcile spending in real time, and create auditable trails across finance and operations functions.
This shift reflects a broader trend across enterprise software markets. Analyst research from Gartner and IDC shows rising adoption of AI-enabled tools that cut manual inputs, improve compliance, and create time for higher-value activities. Finance and procurement teams are among the fastest adopters, with automation increasingly tied to burnout reduction, audit readiness, and scalability rather than pure cost-takeout.
Corporate payment tools are evolving in parallel, integrating virtual and physical cards with automated expense capture and fraud controls. The goal is to eliminate hand-entered data and fragmented approvals, a priority in global organizations managing distributed teams, cross-border travel, and tightening governance requirements.
With automation budgets expanding and talent constraints intensifying, leaders are prioritizing infrastructure that reduces administrative load at scale while maintaining policy integrity. The most mature adopters are pairing automation with workflow redesign and employee training to ensure reclaimed hours flow toward analysis, planning, and supplier engagement, not simply faster execution of the same manual tasks.
When Uptime Becomes a Cost Line
Large operators are already tying automation availability and network uptime to contract terms, depreciation schedules, and productivity targets, similar to how cloud service credits and SLA penalties became standard in enterprise IT. As logistics moves toward uninterrupted flow, uptime is likely to migrate from engineering vocabulary into board and investor discussions, sitting alongside labor efficiency and throughput as a recognized cost driver and value lever. Networks that prove they can maintain velocity without pause won’t simply perform better, they will justify higher asset productivity and capital efficiency, reshaping how supply chain performance is priced, funded, and governed.