76% Indian Employees Feel Their Team Being Constantly Pulled In Too Many Directions

Atlassian Corporation, a provider of team collaboration and productivity software including Jira, Confluence and Trello, has launched its report, ‘The State of Teams 2024’, that addresses the most crucial pain points of modern work and highlights specific focus areas for leaders who want to build high-performing teams, through effective collaboration. This year’s survey revealed 76 per cent of Indian knowledge workers agree that their team is constantly pulled in too many directions.

Atlassian surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers across India, U.S., Australia, Germany, and France, as well as 100 Fortune 500 executives. The data shows knowledge workers spend so much time planning and talking about work that it prevents them from actually doing work that matters. The survey found that 93 per cent of F500 executives say teams could deliver similar outcomes in half the time if they collaborated more effectively, and they estimate that only 24 per cent of their teams are doing mission-critical work. According to the research, 25 billion work hours are lost to ineffective collaboration each year within the Fortune 500.

Annie Dean, Global Head of Team Anywhere, Atlassian said, “Modern teams are more global, online, and overwhelmed than ever before. We know that great teamwork isn’t a product of great software alone. Great teams develop consistent practices, and constantly improve how they work. And we care a lot about validating what those new ways of working are. Our results show that high-performing teams build the right foundations for teamwork by making time to improve their processes, practices, and tools.”

“These new ways of working need to prioritize a reality where work does not happen shoulder to shoulder. The internet and AI are going to start to solve these problems for us. If we can focus, get clear on what matters, and build the right teams, we can deliver creative solutions to the problems we face - at a much higher speed,” she further added.

Team Pain Points

According to the State of Teams report, teams are facing challenges because they are:

(1) Spread across too many goals

• 82 per cent of Indian knowledge workers agree that it would be easier to make progress if they had fewer, more specific goals

(2) Drowning in notifications and meetings

• 83 per cent of Indian knowledge workers say it’s more important to quickly respond to messages than it is to make progress on top priorities
• 77 per cent of Indian knowledge workers say that they are overwhelmed by the number of notifications and messages they receive each day      

(3) Struggling to share and find information

• 66 per cent of Indian knowledge workers find it hard to track down information despite knowing a lot of people at their job
• 63 per cent of Indian knowledge workers have worked on a project and only later found out that another team was working on the same thing
• 63 per cent of Indian knowledge workers say that teams at their company plan and track work in different ways, which makes it hard to collaborate

(4) Unsure how to harness AI in their day-to-day

• 68 per cent of Indian knowledge workers agree that AI is important, but they don't get how to use it in their day-to-day work.

Focus Areas

Top teams stop to answer and act on these three questions:

(1) Are we working on the right things?

In India, when teams put processes in place to identify their top-priority work, they are:

• 7.5x more likely to be effective
• 7.5x more likely to be productive
• 9.8x more likely to be adaptable

(2) Do we use our time to make real progress?

Globally, teams who make the most of their time are:

• 1.6x less likely to engage in “productivity theater” [acting busy to appear productive without actually making progress on important tasks]
• 1.6x more likely to plan and track work in consistent ways across teams

(3) Is knowledge easy to find and understand?

In India, when teams make information self-serve, they are:

• 5.4x more likely to be effective
• 5.6x more likely to be productive
• 6.8x more likely to be adaptable