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Every efficient organization talks about efficiency. Few talk about the root cause of why it’s slipping.
In our 2025 report, “How Work Gets Done,” we surveyed companies — from startups to 15,000-person enterprises — to understand how documentation (and lack thereof) impacts team performance, onboarding, customer success, and ultimately, ROI.
The punchline?
Most company knowledge isn’t written down — and it’s costing millions.
The silent efficiency leak: Undocumented work
You’ve probably felt it. That moment where someone pings “How do I do this again?” or the hours wasted trying to piece together an SOP from Slack threads and outdated wikis.
According to our 2025 study:
- 71% of a company’s know-how isn’t documented
- 2⁄3 of employees don’t have the information they need to do their jobs
- The average employee spends 35 hours/month searching for answers or recreating work, or documenting it manually
- That adds up to $15,120 lost per employee, per year — or $15.1 million annually for a 1,000-person company
This isn’t just frustrating. It’s expensive.
Work can’t flow when knowledge doesn’t
Work has changed. Teams are distributed. Tools evolve daily. Yet, most organizations still rely on outdated methods to transfer knowledge:
- Asking around (a.k.a. oral tradition)
- Watching long training videos
- Copy/pasting screenshots into docs that are obsolete by the time they’re referenced
The result?
Onboarding drags. Compliance suffers. Customers get inconsistent experiences. And your expensive AI investments fall flat — because they can’t surface knowledge that doesn’t exist.
A surprisingly simple fix
This report highlights what happens when organizations flip the script — using AI and modern, user-friendly software to automatically document work while it’s being done.
Companies that prioritize making documentation effortless saw:
- 40% faster onboarding
- 98% of teams made fewer mistakes when following guides
- 93% of teams break down knowledge silos across departments
- 80% of users saw value within days — many within hours
“Before Scribe, creating process documents could take a day or more to complete. With Scribe, I have been able to create process documents in as little as 3 minutes.”
— Jason Shadbolt, Bell Canada (Telecommunications company, 45,000 employees)
The ROI is inarguable
The full report walks through case studies from organizations like New York Life, Northern Trust, and Coronis Health. These teams aren’t just documenting work — they’re scaling performance, reducing burnout, and unlocking time for high-impact, strategic initiatives.
A few standout numbers:
- ⏱ 41.6 hours saved per person per month (New York Life)
- 🧩 70% faster training and enablement (District 300)
- 📉 69% reduction in time spent on non-client tasks (Northern Trust)
- 💰 $15,120 saved per employee annually on average (Scribe Team & Enterprise customer survey 2025)
Read the full report
If your organization is not documenting know-how, this report is your wake-up call.
See how leading organizations are turning documentation from a chore into a competitive advantage. It’s time to work smarter, not harder — and it starts with capturing what you already know.
Read the report →
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