Across every team, in every organization, there’s an endless list of frustrating tasks we all need to complete before we get on with real work.
Things like booking a trip to a conference. Or updating your passport information (again!) for the airline you’ve flown with on the past four trips. Or filing expense reports for the coffee you had on the way to last week’s meeting. Or coding all of last quarter’s supplier invoices that just dropped in your inbox.
We could go on.
We call these non-core tasks shadow work. And they’re chipping away at morale, distracting focus, and costing companies in lost productivity.
Our report, The Cost of Shadow Work, a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Perk (September 2025) puts the cost at $1.7 trillion as employees spend on average 7 hours a week on shadow work.
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So what can you do about it? In this blog we break down the tools and technology on hand to help, and set out the steps to take to remove shadow work so your teams can focus on real work, with real impact.
Automate shadow work to power real work
Reducing shadow work comes down to two key improvements — automating the manual tasks that eat up hours in the day, and doing it using tools that are easy for people to use.
Automation is nothing new. It’s been around in some form since the early 1990s and we’ve seen it transform operations like payroll, customer service, and many more.
In the last 20 years, automation technology has come on leaps and bounds, too. Today’s best work automation tools are a cut above the heavily templated, rigid tools of the past.
Advances in AI have increased the speed, accuracy, and autonomy of these tools, meaning less human input - and in many workflows none at all - is needed.
They’ve cut out the endless back and forth around what’s in policy, who to escalate anomalies to, or chasing approvals. And they’ve connected previously disparate systems, seamlessly linking travel booking tools to spend management, HR systems, ERP, and many more business-critical systems.
Choose a platform built to power real work
With an intelligent platform like Perk, you have a modern, AI-powered automation tool designed to take on the shadow work associated with travel for work and spend management.
You set the rules, and Perk does the rest, automatically taking the right next action whether it’s approving an expense, updating a travel booking, or coding an invoice.
It runs quietly in the background, automating tasks like verifying expenses, approving travel bookings, and matching card payments to receipts.
You need simple tech, not just smart tech
It’s not just about automation - you also have to make it easy for people. In our study, employees reported using, on average, four different tools to manage shadow work and just 7% said their company had a well-integrated tech stack.
When it comes to shadow work, simplification is everything. Adding more tools to an employee’s inventory risks adding bloat to the system - just one more thing to tick off the to-do list before they can focus on real work.
In fact, we found a direct correlation between people whose companies used fewer tools and those who were happy with the tech available to them.
4 steps for reducing shadow work
Step 1: Own the problem
Shadow work isn’t confined to one department. It’s a systemic issue that touches finance, HR, operations, and every team in between.
Our research found that 37% of employees think it’s their manager’s job to fix it — but it’s really a company-wide challenge. Central teams need to take the lead, identifying where time and energy are being lost and treating shadow work as an operational inefficiency, not a personal failing.
This is where leaders can make the biggest impact: by viewing shadow work through a strategic lens, not a cultural one.
Step 2: Close the automation gap
Automation sits at the heart of tackling shadow work. But it’s not a case of automation for automation’s sake — first you need to apply it to the right areas, and next you need the right automation tools for the job.
Our research found that the biggest sources of shadow work - travel bookings, expenses, invoice processing, and organising team events - are some of the least automated in most organizations.
Once you’ve understood the biggest sources of shadow work in your company, look to prioritise them for automation.
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Step 3: Keep it simple
As we’ve seen, consolidating your tech stack into fewer, smarter platforms is essential. Rather than adding a new tool for each area of shadow work, look for unified options that bring together multiple areas in a single platform.
Our own approach at Perk, with a single, intelligent platform for travel and spend brings together more than two thirds of the most frustrating shadow work into one place. Booking and managing travel. Filing expenses. Managing approvals. Coding invoices. Matching card transactions to receipts. All on a single platform.
It means your people spend less time switching between tools, and your finance and operations teams get visibility and control across everything - no need to export and import data from one platform to another.
Step 4: Power real work
With the right tools in place, your teams will be free from the endless back and forth that shadow work brings. According to our research, they’ll be able to claim back up to 7 hours every single week.
That’s time to focus on real work, with real impact.
The technology to remove shadow work is already here
The companies who act now aren’t just improving efficiency — they’re redefining how work gets done.
Think of this as the next big leap in digital transformation. Just as payroll automation unlocked time for HR to focus on people, or CRM freed sales from admin, automation can now eliminate the invisible tax of shadow work.
With the right tools, you can:
Cut the seven-hour drag on productivity per employee
Reclaim focus, creativity, and engagement
Build a culture where people spend their time on what really matters
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