NextGen

New Research Indicates Large-Scale Employee Underperformance

GettyImages-1264981429-office-covid-mask-240

U.S. companies are facing a hidden crisis. According to recent research from advanced employee monitoring company ActivTrak, for every 1,000 employees, organizations lose the productivity equivalent of 130 workers. This is an average of  6 hours and 50 minutes of productive hours per day, translating to $11.2 million annually.

The report is based on May 2025 digital activity data throughout 5,619 organizations and 304,083 tracked employees.

ActivTrak says that a thorough analysis of 300,000+ workers throughout 5,619 organizations demonstrates that businesses get only 87 percent of expected output while paying 100 percent of salary costs.

The deficit is coming from 58 percent of workers not fulfilling established productivity goals. Throughout all tracked businesses, this loss is equivalent to a collective $2.86 billion annually. As a company's size grows, so does the financial

impact. Those with over 251 workers average 7 times in annual productivity losses versus smaller organizations, the research said.

Despite the general underperformance, many of these firms are still assuming their teams work at full capacity. The productivity “blind spot” bogs down performance while quietly draining resources. As operational costs, inflation

and market pressures rise,  the leaders who are able to optimize the productivity of existing staff have a better chance of protecting profit margins without needing to freeze hiring or resort to layoffs.

The report indicates that the opportunity for improvement is both massive and measurable with 58 percent of workers underperforming and organizations with the greatest underutilization rates wasting what is equal to one in five workers’ salary in untapped capacity.