Applying the wasted hours measured by Asana to the Italian hourly labor cost reported by Eurostat gives a conservative estimate of the annual cost per employee: between roughly €7,800 and €9,600, equivalent to almost eight working weeks a year. This is an analysis of public sources, to be read as an order of magnitude rather than a precise measurement.
This research note presents the figure, the method used to build it, the documented mechanisms that explain how time gets scattered, and four low-cost organizational interventions. The data may be cited with attribution to "Prodability" and a link to this page.
The figure: the Prodability analysis
According to Asana's Anatomy of Work Index [1], knowledge workers spend on average about 103 hours a year in unnecessary meetings and about 209 hours a year on duplicated work (work already done or no longer relevant). The total is about 312 hours a year of measurably unproductive time per person — not counting the hours spent "talking about work," which the same source estimates separately.
The hourly labor cost in Italy, according to Eurostat (2024 data) [2], averages about €30.9, below the EU average of €33.5.
Combining the two figures:
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Hours/year per employee in unnecessary meetings (Asana) | ~103 h |
| Hours/year per employee on duplicated work (Asana) | ~209 h |
| Total measurable "work about work" hours | ~312 h |
| Hourly labor cost in Italy (Eurostat 2024) | ~€30.9 |
| Conservative hourly cost assumption (range) | €25 – €30.9 |
| Estimated annual cost per employee | ~€7,800 – €9,600 |
| Time equivalent (40-hour week) | ~7.8 weeks/year |
Nature of the figure. It is a working hypothesis to be validated, not a direct measurement on an Italian sample. The wasted hours come from an international survey of knowledge workers; the hourly cost is the Italian average. The result should be read as an order of magnitude useful for comparison, not as an exact number.
Why time gets scattered
Three documented mechanisms help explain how more than 300 hours a year pile up.
Interruptions carry a recovery cost. Research by Gloria Mark and colleagues (University of California, Irvine) [3], based on observing 24 knowledge workers in the workplace, measures an average of 25 minutes and 26 seconds before people return to a task after an interruption. A later study by the same group, which tracked the computer activity of 40 knowledge workers over two working weeks, measures an average attention span on a single screen of 47 seconds, with a median of 40 [7]. Fragmentation and the constant rebuilding of focus erode hours without it being immediately visible.
Meetings multiply beyond what is useful. The share of unnecessary meetings reported by Asana [1] is consistent with a well-known pattern: without explicit criteria for when a meeting is really the right channel, their number tends to grow and their marginal value to shrink.
Asynchronous communication swallows the day. Handling email takes up a significant share of the week for people whose work involves coordination, and part of that time can be recovered by deciding in advance which channel serves which purpose. This is an observation from practice, not a measurement: available estimates vary considerably with the measurement method and with the very definition of "time spent on email."
The context: companies and productivity in Italy
The issue carries structural weight. According to ISTAT data [4], small and medium-sized enterprises (including micro-enterprises) account for about 99% of active companies in Italy and employ the majority of private-sector workers (estimated at around 76%). It is a business fabric where even small efficiency gains add up on a large scale.
At the macro level, labor productivity in Italy has been growing at a very modest pace for thirty years: according to ISTAT [6], over the whole 1995–2024 period average annual growth stopped at 0.3%, with a 1.9% decline in 2024 alone.
The most recent figure confirms the picture: Eurostat data [5] show a negative change in productivity per hour worked for 2025 (about -0.6%), placing Italy among only two EU countries with a negative sign.
Against this backdrop, reducing the time lost inside each individual company looks like one of the levers actually within management's reach, unlike macroeconomic factors.
Methodological caveat. It is not correct to simply multiply the cost per employee by all the people employed in small and medium-sized Italian companies: not all of them are knowledge workers, and the surveys rest on different samples. The aggregate relevance should be read in qualitative terms, not as a precise national total.
The ROIT reading: four low-cost interventions
In the Prodability framework, these hours are the negative side of ROIT (Return on Investment of Time): time invested without a proportional return. Shifting even part of it toward value-adding activities is what improves the return on time. Four low-cost interventions, consistent with the literature cited:
- An explicit criterion for meetings. Define the goal, expected output and alternative channel in advance: a meeting is called only if asynchronous work is not enough.
- Protected work blocks. Set aside notification-free slots for cognitively demanding activities, reducing interruptions and therefore recovery times.
- A single source of truth. Centralize information and project status to cut duplicated work and scattered searching.
- Communication hygiene. Decide when to use email, chat and shared documents, to recover part of the time absorbed by asynchronous channels.
Limits and conditions
- The wasted hours come from an international survey (Asana) of knowledge workers; they are not Italian sample data.
- Eurostat's hourly cost covers companies with 10+ employees: for micro-enterprises the real value may be lower, which is why the estimate uses a conservative range on the downside.
- The per-employee estimate is an order of magnitude, not an exact measurement; it is explicitly labeled as a hypothesis to be validated.
- Correlation does not imply causation: the stagnation of Italian productivity has many causes, and "work about work" is one component, not the only explanation.
Press sheet (citable data)
- ~312 hours/year per knowledge worker in unnecessary meetings (≈103 h) and duplicated work (≈209 h). Source: Asana, Anatomy of Work Index.
- ~€7,800–€9,600 a year per employee: estimated cost of "work about work," equal to ~8 working weeks. Prodability analysis of Asana and Eurostat data.
- ~25 minutes (25 minutes and 26 seconds on average) before returning to an interrupted task. Source: Mark, Gonzalez and Harris, CHI 2005 [3].
- ~99% of Italian companies are small and medium-sized enterprises, with about 76% of employment. Source: ISTAT.
- Labor productivity in Italy: +0.3% average annual growth over 1995–2024; per hour worked, ~-0.6% in 2025. Sources: ISTAT (1995–2024 series), Eurostat (2025 figure).
The data may be cited with attribution to "Prodability" and a link to this page. For interviews, detailed data or the methodological angle, you can contact the Prodability editorial team.
Conclusion
"Work about work" is not a matter of individual discipline but of organizational design: you reduce it by acting on meeting criteria, protecting focus, centralizing information and keeping channels clean. The practical starting point is making business meetings effective and learning how to manage interruptions; the systemic frame is operational efficiency.
Recovering even one of the eight estimated weeks shifts the return on time of the whole organization: for business owners and managers running lean teams, it is one of the few productivity levers that requires no capital investment.
Sources and references
[1] Asana, "Anatomy of Work Index" (hours in unnecessary meetings and duplicated work per knowledge worker). Available at: https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work-index — 2023 release: https://investors.asana.com/news-releases/news-release-details/asana-anatomy-work-global-index-2023-smart-collaboration-and
[2] Eurostat, "Hourly labour costs" (2024 hourly labor cost, EU and member states), March 2025. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20250328-1
[3] Mark, G., Gonzalez, V. M., Harris, J., "No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work", CHI 2005, pp. 321-330, DOI 10.1145/1054972.1055017. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/1054972.1055017
[4] ISTAT, data on the production system and SMEs (share of companies and employment). Available at: https://www.istat.it/
[5] Eurostat, "Productivity trends using key national accounts indicators" (change in productivity per hour worked, 2025; dataset nama_10_lp_ulc). Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Productivity_trends_using_key_national_accounts_indicators
[6] ISTAT, "Misure di produttività — Anni 1995-2024", press release of December 12, 2025. Available at: https://www.istat.it/comunicato-stampa/misure-di-produttivita-anni-1995-2024/
[7] Mark, G., Iqbal, S., Czerwinski, M., Johns, P., Sano, A., "Neurotics Can't Focus: An in situ Study of Online Multitasking in the Workplace", CHI 2016, pp. 1739-1744, DOI 10.1145/2858036.2858202. Full text on the author's site at the University of California, Irvine: https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Publications_files/CHI%2016%20Multitasking%20and%20Focus.pdf (Table 1: mean 47.0 seconds, standard deviation 21.4, median 40.2, across 40 knowledge workers tracked for two working weeks)