Workplace Automation Statistics 2026: Adoption, ROI, Time
Generative AI and other current technologies “have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today” (McKinsey, The Economic Potential of Generative AI, 2023). 70% of companies are at least piloting automation, but fewer than 20% have scaled it across the business (McKinsey Global Survey on automation, 2022). The companies that invest most cut process costs by 22%, against 8% for laggards (Bain & Company, Automation Scorecard 2024, 2024).
This page covers the automation of tasks and processes: workflow automation, RPA, business process automation and back-office work. Every figure below is sourced inline with the year noted, and older studies are included only where nothing newer measures the same thing.
How much of work can be automated
60 to 70 percent of employees’ time is absorbed by work activities that generative AI and other current technologies could automate (McKinsey, 2023). McKinsey’s earlier estimate was half.
25% of total work time goes to activities that require understanding natural language, which is why the estimate jumped once generative AI arrived (McKinsey, 2023).
About half of all the activities people are paid to do could be automated by adapting already demonstrated technology, yet less than 5 percent of occupations are candidates for full automation (McKinsey Global Institute, A Future That Works, 2017). This is the canonical pre-AI baseline, and the 2023 figure above is its update.
29.5% of hours worked in the US economy could be automated by 2030 with generative AI, up from 21.5% without it (McKinsey Global Institute, Generative AI and the Future of Work in America, 2023). McKinsey notes this is the midpoint of a very wide range, from 3.7% to 55.3%.
2045 is the midpoint of McKinsey’s scenarios for when half of today’s work activities could actually be automated, with a range of 2030 to 2060, roughly a decade earlier than its previous estimate (McKinsey, 2023).
22% of work tasks are performed mainly by technology today, 47% mainly by humans alone and 30% by a combination. Employers expect a nearly even three-way split by 2030 (World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025, 2025).
The newest technical-potential estimate, that about 57 percent of US work hours could in theory be automated with currently demonstrated technology (McKinsey Global Institute, 2025), is covered with the job-loss forecasts in AI replacing jobs statistics.
How many companies use workflow automation
70% of respondents say their organizations are at least piloting automation technologies in one or more business units or functions, up from 66% in 2020 and 57% in 2018 (McKinsey, 2022, survey of 639 participants fielded October 2021). It is the most recent edition of this survey.
Less than 20 percent say their organizations have scaled automation technologies across multiple parts of the business (McKinsey, 2022).
50% of organizational processes have been automated, a slight decrease from 52% the year before (Camunda, State of Process Orchestration Report 2024, 2024, 866 respondents at companies with 250 or more employees). 90% of the IT decision-makers surveyed plan to increase automation investment in the next 24 months. Camunda sells process orchestration software, so read it as such.
79% of organizations have implemented significant automation, but many lack an effective way to control, manage and sustain it (Camunda, 2025 State of Process Orchestration and Automation, 2025, 800 respondents).
73% of employers globally expect to accelerate process automation in the next five years (World Economic Forum, 2025).
66% of small and midsize businesses say automation is now essential for running their business, and 88% say it lets them compete with larger companies (Zapier, State of Business Automation, 2021, 2,000 US knowledge workers at companies under 250 employees). Zapier sells automation software and has not repeated this survey. For current small-firm data, see small business AI statistics.
Around 30% of all US workers are potentially exposed to advanced technologies used for automation purposes, because adoption concentrates in large firms (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023, from the Annual Business Survey technology module). Adoption of AI tools specifically is tracked in AI in the workplace statistics, and agent deployment in AI agent statistics.
How much time automation saves
59% of information workers say they could save six or more hours a week if the repetitive aspects of their job were automated (Smartsheet, Automation in the Workplace 2017, 2017, about 1,000 US information workers). More than 40% spend at least a quarter of their work week on manual, repetitive tasks, led by email, data collection and data entry. It is a vendor survey and an old one, but it remains the most cited measure of this question.
Four and a half hours a week is what office workers say they waste on tasks they think could be automated, and 67% feel they are constantly doing the same tasks over and over (UiPath, 2021 Office Worker Survey, 2021). UiPath sells automation software.
94% of small-business employees say they perform repetitive, time-consuming tasks in their role, most often data entry (38%) and document creation (34%) (Zapier, 2021).
All three are estimates by workers of time they could save. None is a measured saving.
Where the “automation saves 240 hours a year” statistic comes from
The claim that automation saves employees 240 hours a year and business leaders 360 hours a year is usually credited to Smartsheet. It is not in Smartsheet’s report. It traces to the WorkMarket 2020 In(Sight) Report, a survey by KRC Research of 200 business leaders and 200 employees fielded in April 2017.
What it found: 53% of employees believe they could save up to 2 hours a day by automating tasks, which WorkMarket equates to roughly 20 hours a month, and 78% of business leaders believe they could save up to 3 hours a day, roughly 30 hours a month (WorkMarket, 2017). Multiply by twelve and you get 240 and 360. So the figure is a belief about an upper bound, held by half of a 200-person sample nine years ago, and not a measured result.
Workflow automation market size
$4.7 billion was the size of the global robotic process automation market in 2025, forecast to reach $35.8 billion by 2033 at a 29.0% compound annual growth rate (Grand View Research, 2026 edition). This is a forecast.
$86.63 billion is Grand View Research’s forecast for the global workflow management system market in 2030, from an estimated $9.54 billion in 2022, a 33.3% growth rate (Grand View Research, base year 2022).
$1.30 billion is the forecast for the US workload scheduling and automation market in 2030, from $761.3 million in 2022 (Grand View Research, base year 2022).
$2.9 billion was Gartner’s forecast for worldwide RPA software spending in 2022, after $2.39 billion in 2021, with $3.35 billion projected for 2023 (Gartner, 2022). Gartner has not published a newer public RPA forecast, so these are now historical. The same goes for its widely quoted $596.6 billion hyperautomation figure, which was a 2021 forecast for the year 2022 and covers a far broader basket of software (Gartner, 2021).
Automation ROI and payback
22% is the average process cost reduction automation leaders achieved in 2023, against 8% for laggards, and the top quartile of leaders cut costs by 37% (Bain, 2024, survey of 893 automation executives). Bain defines leaders as companies putting at least 20% of their IT budget into automation and laggards as those under 5%.
32% is the average cost reduction reported by organizations that moved beyond piloting intelligent automation, up from 24% in 2020 (Deloitte, Automation with Intelligence, 2022, 479 executives in 35 countries). It is the latest edition of the survey.
22 months is the average payback period for organizations piloting intelligent automation, up from 16 months in 2020 (Deloitte, 2022).
Over half of respondents have not calculated the cost reduction from their automation, and 70% have not calculated the revenue increase (Deloitte, 2022). Most ROI figures in circulation, including the common “30% to 200% in the first year” for RPA, do not trace to a primary study we could find.
11.4% higher labor productivity is associated with firms that use advanced automation technologies (Acemoglu et al., NBER Working Paper 30659, 2022, from the Census Bureau’s 2019 Annual Business Survey).
Why automation projects fail
Process fragmentation has been the top barrier to automation in four consecutive Deloitte surveys, followed by lack of a clear vision, lack of IT readiness and resistance to change (Deloitte, 2022).
51% of respondents see rising complexity because processes span multiple systems, up from 45% in 2023. 39% say legacy systems are difficult to connect to, 34% call budget a major roadblock, and 58% point to a disconnect between IT and business leaders (Camunda, 2024).
27% of the average organization’s 957 applications are connected to each other (MuleSoft, 2026 Connectivity Benchmark Report, 2026, 1,050 IT leaders). MuleSoft sells integration software.
26% of IT projects were not delivered on time in the last 12 months (MuleSoft, 2026).
50 endpoints is the average number an organization now manages to execute the tasks in a single business process, a 19% increase over five years, and 82% fear that unchecked risks could lead to what Camunda calls “Automation Armageddon” (Camunda, 2025).
45% of automation leaders planned to invest significantly more the following year, against 17% of laggards, so the gap widens (Bain, 2024).
What employees think about automation
92% of knowledge workers at small and midsize businesses agree that automation has improved their lives in the workplace, and nearly 70% say automation software has made them more productive (Zapier, 2021). This is the source of the rounded “90%” that circulates. It is a vendor survey of people at companies already discussing automation tools.
58% of workers believe automation can address burnout and improve job fulfillment, and 31% already use business automation tools at work (UiPath, Automation Generation Report, 2023, 6,400 workers). Among those users, 83% believe it helps with burnout and job satisfaction.
86% of information workers say automation in the workplace makes employees more efficient and productive, and 72% say they would use the time saved to perform higher-value work (Smartsheet, 2017).
Automation by department: finance, HR, IT, sales, customer service
Finance: 60% of accounts payable teams still manually enter invoices into their ERP or accounting system, down from 85% in 2023 (Institute of Financial Operations and Leadership study, summarized by sponsor SAP Concur, 2025).
HR: 60% of HR work tasks will be completed through an intelligent agent or LLM-centric interface by 2030 (Gartner, 2025). This is a prediction. More in HR statistics.
IT: 36% of IT teams’ time goes to designing, building and testing new custom integrations (MuleSoft, 2026).
Sales: 60% of sales reps’ time goes to non-selling tasks such as entering customer notes into the CRM and chasing internal approvals (Salesforce, 2026). More in sales statistics.
Customer service: 14% of customer service issues are fully resolved in self-service, and only 36% of issues customers describe as “very simple” (Gartner, 2024, 5,728 customers). More in customer service statistics.
Automating the coordination work between apps
The failure data points at one problem: processes span many systems, and most of those systems are not connected. For a small team, the repetitive hours are rarely inside one app. They are the email that has to become a CRM update, the form that has to become a calendar invite, the follow-up nobody sent.
Carly runs Zapier-style workflows alongside AI agents that handle email, scheduling and follow-up, so the rule-based steps and the judgment calls live in one place. Carly connects to thousands of apps. For a comparison of the options, see the best AI workflow automation tools.
FAQ
How much of work can be automated? Current technologies, including generative AI, could automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today, up from an earlier estimate of half (McKinsey, 2023). Less than 5 percent of occupations can be fully automated (McKinsey Global Institute, 2017).
How many companies use automation? 70% of organizations are at least piloting automation technologies, up from 57% in 2018, but less than 20 percent have scaled them across multiple parts of the business (McKinsey, 2022). About 50% of organizational processes are automated (Camunda, 2024).
What is the ROI of automation? Automation leaders cut process costs by 22% on average against 8% for laggards (Bain, 2024). Organizations past the pilot stage report a 32% average cost reduction, and pilots take an average of 22 months to pay back (Deloitte, 2022). Over half of organizations have not calculated their cost reduction at all.
Does automation really save 240 hours a year? That figure is not a measurement. It comes from a 2017 WorkMarket survey in which 53% of 200 employees believed they could save up to 2 hours a day, which WorkMarket equated to about 20 hours a month (WorkMarket, 2017). Twelve times 20 is 240.
Related: AI in the Workplace Statistics · AI Agent Statistics · AI Replacing Jobs Statistics · Small Business AI Statistics · Productivity Statistics · Best workflow automation software
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