36% of Australian workers say that Australia is the most innovative country in the world yet, according to a report by Asana, its businesses are facing crucial crossroads within the workplace.

Whilst the global business landscape is rapidly transforming, 95% of Australian workers say via the report their organisation’s technology and tools are in need of innovation.

Drawing on insights from a survey of more than 2,000 Australian workers, Asana examines the challenges that Australian workers and businesses face in navigating the next era of work in The State of Work Innovation: Australia.

Whilst there is plenty of excitement concerning disruptive technologies like AI, there are also concerns – also shared with the rest of the world – that enterprises are not yet able to harness the technology to its full potential.

Challenges over tapping into AI potential

Despite such optimism about how AI can be leveraged within an enterprise environment, Asana’s report highlights a lack of alignment between executives and individual contributors. As a result, this is impacting effective AI implementation and slowing down innovation.

The research, which was conducted by Asana’s Work Innovation Lab, finds that today’s workers struggle with high workload, lack of clarity and digital exhaustion.

One of the top challenges identified by the report is a lack of clarity and collaboration, with respondents citing a high number of unproductive meetings and a lack of clear purpose. Over half (52%) of workers feel their workload is unmanageable to the point of needing to take a day off at least once a month. Likewise, 55% of workers believe their organisation’s leaders do not currently do enough to mitigate digital exhaustion, also known as digital burnout.

These findings differ when Asana spoke with executives versus individual contributors, as evidenced in the below infographic.