Knowledge Workers Struggle to Find and Reuse Work

The Research Presentation Strategies PPT Use survey found that workers who use PowerPoint in their job: 1) like to re-use slides frequently and 2) have trouble finding the slides and presentations they have created. Now a very interesting survey by Coveo has some supportive findings. The Coveo study examined the work practices of 412 Knowledge Workers and 337 Knowledge Management Practitioners and was conducted from June to August of 2014. According to Diane Barry of Coveo, “It’s been well documented that employees spend a great deal of their time searching for, not finding and recreating information. What this study uncovers is the impact on new work: respondents report that they mostly do rework, as Knowledge Workers rarely have easy access to information relevant to their current work.”

Barry goes on to say that “Rework simply should not happen in a digital workplace.” We at SlideSource.com completely agree. In the Coveo survey, when asked if they were able to quickly find and reuse work that had been created before, almost 40% said they were only able to do this less than 25% of the time. That means 75% of the time they are re-working, re-creating and being far less productive than they could and should be.

The Coveo survey also found that knowledge workers believed their organizations would benefit from better performance in innovation, higher sales and profitability if they had better access to existing content. In other recent research, PowerPoint was found to be part of the “machinery of knowledge production.” SlideSource.com is committed to helping companies achieve better results through improved management of and collaboration around their presentation content. In other words, every slide should count.