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2025 REPORT
Two thirds of employees admit they don't know how to do their jobs. There’s a way to fix this.
Work has changed dramatically.
The way we document it hasn’t.
Introduction
This report explores what happens when organizations document their workflows, processes, and know-how — and the cost when they don’t. From faster onboarding to fewer mistakes, the results are measurable, repeatable, and transformational for the world’s leading organizations.
Teams move fast, tools evolve daily, and yet we’re still stuck documenting workflows like it’s 1993. That means manually taking screenshots, writing step-by-step instructions, and repeating the same explanations again and again. This leads to very few critical workflows actually being documented — on average, 71% of an organization's know-how exists only in people's heads.
Without access to this know-how, team members are blocked. They're left clicking through outdated wikis, scattered help docs, and long training videos — often to give up and reinvent the wheel. Your team members each lose an entire day every week searching for answers that should take seconds to find.
In the age of AI, there are fewer excuses for inefficiency. You’ve probably already started investing in AI for your company, and many tools are fantastic at automating tasks and finding information. But, when that information doesn’t exist or those workflows haven’t been documented, the tools are just as stuck as your people. They’re kind of like this library; they can help you find the correct book in the stacks, but if the book doesn't exist — because under ⅓ of organizational knowledge has been documented — the librarian doesn't really have much to offer you. They can answer ⅓ of the questions. And the answers may be out of date.
Under ⅓ of organizational knowledge has been documented.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
From documenting processes to defining best practices, explore how the world’s most efficient organizations are scaling performance, reducing burnout, and unlocking time for high-impact, strategic, and creative work.
1.
The problem hiding in plain sight
Unless work is documented in an easy-to-find, easy-to-follow, accurate way, employees will always have to ask someone: “How do I…?”. Or, they’ll guess.
2.
An instant fix
It’s actually possible to capture your work while you’re doing your work. What used to take hours now takes zero extra time.
3.
Real results, really fast
Lack of documentation is a costly problem, but the fix is nearly instant — and gives every employee back 35 hours/month.
When work is documented in an easy-to-find, easy-to-follow, accurate way, employees know what great looks like. And how to do it.
Picture this: Sarah from Accounting is out sick. Three people need her workflow for the month-end close. They spend hours trying to figure it out on their own, but still get it wrong. Sound familiar?
Knowledge is trapped in your team members’ heads. A staggering 71% of an organization’s workflows and processes are not documented. And it’s no one’s fault — documentation has always been so painful that most teams skip it. But, colleagues are blocked without it.
If this sounds like a benign problem, it's not. Our research showed that this documentation gap translates into 2⁄3 of employees admitting they don't know how to get their jobs done correctly. On Sarah’s Accounting team of 8 team members, this means 6 don’t know how to do their jobs right. Worse, they’re spending 50% of their time (that’s half!) searching for answers and duplicating work.
When organizational know-how is inaccessible to most teams, it creates a damaging gap that slows down onboarding, creates costly (yet preventable) errors, and drags down team efficiency.
$15.1 million
At a basic level, every single team member needs to:
Onboard or be onboarded as a new hire
Use software correctly
Build or follow training materials
Create or adhere to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
Unless this is documented in an easy-to-find, easy-to-follow, accurate way, employees will always have to ask someone (“How do I…?”). Or, they’ll have to guess the answer, reinventing the wheel and duplicating efforts — often inconsistently. Every year without documentation costs the average 1,000-person organization $15,120,000. That's the salary of 202 people — except you're paying it to inefficiency.
Let’s be real — getting answers without documentation is embarrassing at best and grossly inefficient at worst.
“Our team used to be swamped answering questions all day in Slack. Now that we can answer questions with Scribe, we’ve seen fewer tickets coming through as people have easy access to these self-serve resources.”
“One of the biggest wins was realizing how quickly we could get to value with Scribe. Someone could create a Scribe in under three minutes, and it immediately became a scalable asset for the team.”
IMPACT AREA
BENEFIT
Time savings
Each team member saves 35 hours/month searching for knowledge, documenting workflows, and training colleagues. This equates to $15,120 per employee per year.
Ramp time
New hires ramp 40% faster. Trapped knowledge becomes team knowledge.
Execution quality
98% say their teams make fewer mistakes following a Scribe guide.
Knowledge sharing
93% say Scribe helped break down knowledge silos between departments.
Customer impact
85% report improved outcomes for customers or internalstakeholders.
Fast time to value
80% of users saw value from Scribe in just days - many in hours or even minutes. Many customers say it's the fastest solution they've ever implemented.
$15,120
35 hrs
“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.”
“I have a Scribe that's received over 2,000 views. Before Scribe, I could have spent 5 minutes teaching someone how to do that thing. That's 10,000 minutes - or a month of my time - I've potentially saved myself just by using Scribe."
$15,120
12x
"Most of our team’s knowledge was siloed in their heads, and documenting it manually would take months. With Scribe, the burden is lifted, empowering us to capture processes in just minutes."
“Our processes can be complicated and inconsistent, so employees were finding their own workarounds. Now that they can find all their answers in Scribe, we’ve seen participation and compliance with our stated procedures increase to 98 percent where it was previously 80 percent.”
the takeaway
Redact sensitive data
Document key processes without worrying about exposing sensitive data.
Share with colleagues and clients.
Embed or share guides and movies where your team already works — wikis, help centers & more.
Ensure work gets done right.
Turn any workflow into easy-to-follow guides and interactive walkthroughs.
The organizations that Scribe works with aren’t just documenting processes — they’re scaling performance, reducing burnout, and unlocking time for high-impact, strategic, and creative work.
Remember that library with 2⁄3 of its books missing? With Scribe, you're not just filling the empty shelves—you're creating digitized, searchable workflows that update as they change. Now your employees (and your AI tools) can find every answer and do every workflow, and that brilliant librarian finally has a complete collection to work with. The knowledge that once lived only in people's heads becomes the foundation that powers both your human and artificial intelligence.
Trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500
600,000 organizations rely on Scribe to train colleagues, assist customers, and drive software adoption.
