Admin is the $954 billion problem
For years we’ve heard that AI will take over work tasks and eliminate every office role. It hasn’t. Instead, we can all draft a romantic poem in seconds or watch a podcast hosted by a Labrador.
While social media content becomes ever more unhinged, the real power of AI has been sidelined. Routine admin tasks and legacy processes go unchecked, eating hours of every working week. Why? The World Economic Forum sums it up:
“Administrative work is the foundation of every industry – especially in finance, HR, healthcare, logistics and professional services. Yet it remains largely untouched by meaningful AI-driven transformation. It’s often seen as too fragmented, too people-dependent or too small to bother with.”
Fyxer isn’t satisfied to watch admin dominate the workday. Professionals have more value to offer than entering data into a spreadsheet, or typing up meeting notes. We’ve launched the Admin Burden Index to quantify the business impact of admin overload. We surveyed 5,000 UK and U.S. office workers across November - December 2025 to uncover how much time they spend on "avoidable" admin tasks — tasks they believe AI could handle.
The data reveals that admin is the root of performance paralysis stunting business growth. The silent productivity cost hitting UK and US organizations is a staggering $954 billion every year. That’s an average of $17,000 per employee being spent on avoidable admin time.
The Invisible Overhead stealing 5.6 hours every week
That $954 billion overhead never hits the balance sheet. It’s hidden in the individual admin tasks no one’s tracking. The Admin Burden Index shows that office workers spend 5.6 hours, nearly a full working day, every week on admin tasks that AI could handle.
This time loss isn’t confined to interns and junior roles. Data shows that the admin burden scales with salary. High earners spend the longest on repetitive tasks that could otherwise be handled by AI - meaning their employers pay the steepest price for avoidable admin. They average 76 minutes per day of avoidable admin, while low earners clock in at 58 minutes.
These tasks aren't unimportant. But hours spent organizing files or drafting follow-up emails displace value-creating work. Employees are frustrated by this tension. Admin is described as “taking time away from my main responsibilities” by 35% of respondents.
The Turnover Tax: 48% of office workers have considered leaving
Admin isn’t just tedious. For almost half of office workers it’s reached “overwhelming” levels. That includes 10% of respondents who feel “very overwhelmed” by their admin load. Digging into the data reveals the destructive downstream impact — employee turnover.
Admin overwhelm, and its contribution to burnout, has pushed 48% of the workforce to consider quitting their role. They’re fed up that they can’t focus on what they were hired to do.
Both high-earners and younger generations are raising the red flag. This creates a dual retention risk for organizations: losing experienced senior talent, who are harder to replace, and failing to meet the expectations of younger employees who represent the next 30-40 years of the workforce.
The Performance Deficit: two-thirds of employees say their AI tools are insufficient
The recurring rhetoric that employees fear AI taking their jobs isn’t supported by the ABI data. Only 5% of respondents expressed any concern about AI replacing their role. Instead, positive sentiment toward AI sits at 73% across office workers. They believe 67 minutes of their daily admin tasks could be automated by AI.
The bottleneck is employer AI enablement. Two-thirds of respondents describe their AI tools as partial, ineffective or insufficient. The gap between what employees could achieve with AI and what they're delivering today reveals a Performance Deficit most employers aren’t addressing.
A McKinsey study released in January 2025 found that employees “are more ready to embrace AI in the workplace than business leaders imagine. They are more familiar with AI tools, they want more support and training.” AI has made huge leaps in the past 12 months, yet the Admin Burden Index reaches the same conclusion as this McKinsey report. Employees are still waiting for their employers to provide the training and support they need to successfully adopt AI tools across their workflow.
A positive data point from the ABI research is that where AI is being used, it delivers results. Nearly 75% of AI users say AI tools have improved their work, rising above 90% in science, technology and research sectors.
Email is the epicenter of the daily admin drain
One admin task emerges above all others to claim the unenviable title of Biggest Time-Drain. Email. Managing an inbox consumes up to 50% of the workday for many roles, which is far beyond what employees currently imagine could be automated.
The average office worker spends 4.3 hours writing and responding to emails every day. Fyxer user insights reveal how the inbox doesn’t stop at close of play – 40% of work inbox activity happens outside 9am-6pm and 10% of emails are received on the weekend.
The experience of inbox overwhelm sounds the same across the globe. In Fyxer research interviews the same phrases continuously crop up:
“Mentally-draining”
“Low-value but high-effort”
“Something that blocks real progress”
Fyxer is the email assistant that tackles this pain head-on. It organizes your inbox, writes draft replies and takes actionable meeting notes. Fyxer processed 1.4 billion emails in 2025 and saves users an average of one hour each day on avoidable inbox admin.
Get the fix: download the full Admin Burden Report
As an Invisible Overhead, admin represents systemic inefficiency not poor individual time management. The admin burden at work leaves employees facing a tidal wave of low-value, repetitive tasks which displace the core work that drives business growth.
Read the full report to get the data behind the admin drain and the strategies to fix it.