Communication Statistics 2023 💬

Communication is fundamentally important to business success – and yet it’s something that so many people seem to struggle with. To get a better understanding of how people feel about communication in their workplace, we surveyed 413 respondents in November 2022. We asked them about communication, productivity, software and more.

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Section 1: How do brands communicate?

We started by asking respondents to tell us which communication tools they use – for both internal communications with co-workers, and externally, working with clients.

With clients…

Email is the most widely used tool for client communication, with 62%. Other responses split fairly evenly between online chat tools such as Slack (11%), project management tools (11%), phone (9%) and face-to-face (3%.)
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-1-1
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With co-workers…

Email is the most widely used way people choose to communicate with their colleagues – but only just!

Just under a third (31%) of people say they communicate with their colleagues primarily by email.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-1-2
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This is very closely followed by 30% who use an online chat tool such as Slack.

15% use a project management tool, 7% primarily communicate by phone, and 7% work face-to-face.

10% responded that they use a tool beyond this – with a variety of tools including Notion, WhatsApp, and video conferencing tools such as Zoom and Google Meet all getting mentions.

Section 2: Pandemic: The new normal?

It’s widely known that the pandemic massively accelerated the trend of remote working. We wanted to find out whether things have started to revert to type – or whether people are continuing to work from home.

We asked each of our respondents how many days they work in the office. 44% of people told us they’re still fully remote. 18% are back to being fully office based. 13% split their time evenly between the two. 10% work mostly in the office with some remote, and 15% work mostly remotely with some time spent in the office.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-2-1

Although hybrid working has established itself to some extent, the overwhelming majority of people we surveyed are still working fully remotely with less than 1 in 5 back in the office full-time.

This means that, moving forward, teams need to think hard about how to make sure communication in the workplace remains strong – whatever that workplace looks like.

Section 3: An increasing challenge?

We wanted to understand how things are actually changing, on the ground. We found that…

32% of people believe communication with clients and co-workers has become more of a challenge in the past 12 months.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-3-1

74% of businesses have started using a new tool to help organise, communicate and manage projects in the past 12 months.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-3-2

Section 4: Time wasted in meetings

60% of people feel they regularly waste time in meetings.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-4-1

This is actually a slight fall from last year’s survey in which around 66% of people said they felt they regularly wasted time in meetings. However it continues to illustrate that a sizeable chunk of people – well over half – feel that pointless or protracted meetings are eating into the time they could otherwise be spending on more productive tasks.

Section 5: The cost of poor communication

Poor communication manifests itself in a number of different ways.

68% of people say they’ve personally wasted time as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-1

53% of people have missed messages as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-2

42% of people have suffered from burnout, stress and fatigue as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-3

35% of people have experienced lost and missing files as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-4

30% of people have had a poor customer experience as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-5

12% of people have lost customers to competitors as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-6

10% of businesses have lost employees as a result of communication issues in their business.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-5-1-7

Section 6: How companies rate their performance

We asked people to evaluate the performance of their companies when it came to three essential qualities: efficiency, communication and organisation.

Just 4% of businesses rate their efficiency as ‘excellent.’
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-6-1-1

A significant majority of businesses (more than half) believe their efficiency levels are ‘average’ with only 13% combined believing they are ‘below average’ or ‘poor.’
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-6-1-2

When it comes to communication, just over a third rate their performance as either ‘excellent’ (7%) or ‘above average (29%).
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-6-2-1

A little under half describe their communication as ‘average’ while 15% say they’re ‘below average’ or ‘poor.’
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-6-2-2

When asked to evaluate how organised they are, the data suggests many businesses feel they have more to do. More than 1 in 5 of them describe their performance on this front as ‘poor’ or ‘below average.’
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-6-3-1

Again, a healthy majority describe their organisation levels as ‘average,’ while around a third describe their performance as ‘above average’ or ‘excellent.’
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-6-3-2

Our analysis…

There’s a familiar pattern to each of these data points.

In every field, businesses are most likely to describe their performance as ‘average.’

A very small minority place themselves in the ‘excellent’ or ‘poor’ sections and, where companies place themselves slightly above or below this, they tend to be more likely to nominate themselves as ‘above’ average than ‘below.’

This suggests, while most businesses are broadly happy with their performance levels when it comes to efficiency, communication and organisation, they also feel there is a great deal of potential room for improvement.

Section 7: How customers feel

99% of people say it’s important that a business communicates effectively with them as a customer.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-7-1-1

96% of people feel the businesses they buy from have room for improvement when it comes to effective communication and project management.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-7-1-2

94% of people say it’s important they can find out where things are up to with their purchase or project – e.g. exact status and next deliverable.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-7-1-3

And most tellingly…

68% of people say they’ve stopped dealing with a company and moved to a competitor due to poor business communication skills.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-7-2-1

BUT THERE’S SOME GOOD NEWS…

40% of people feel the businesses they work with have improved their communication in the past 12 months
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-7-3-1

Section 8: The power of project management tools

While 55% of people say they have a good understanding of what others in their team are working on at any given time – this rises to 82% when they primarily use a project management tool to communicate with their co-workers and clients.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-1-1

57% of people say they find it easy to get an exact view of where projects are up to – this rises to 82% among people who use a project management tool to communicate with both clients and co-workers.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-2-1

79% of people who primarily use a project management tool to communicate with co-workers say it leads to improved internal communication. 73% say it leads to better internal efficiency, 62% say it delivers an increased rate of project success. 52% say it leads to improved client communication. 41% say it leads to a better customer experience, and 27% associate it with better employee wellbeing.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-3-1

72% of people who primarily use a project management tool to communicate with clients say it leads to better internal efficiency. 68% say it improves the customer experience, 62% say it increases the rate of project success, and 22% say it leads to better employee wellbeing.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-4-1

The power of project management tools: Other data points

People are 40% less likely to regularly waste time in meetings when they primarily use a PM tool to communicate with both clients and co-workers.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-5-1

Brands that primarily use a project management tool for client and co-worker communication are nearly three times as likely to rate the way their business communicates as ‘excellent’.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-5-2

Employees are 57% less likely to report burnout, stress and fatigue where they primarily use a PM tool to communicate with both clients and co-workers.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-5-3

Brands that primarily use a project management tool for client and co-worker communication are more than twice as likely to rate their project efficiency as ‘excellent’.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-5-4

82% of brands who use a project management tool to communicate with clients and co-workers rate their business as having ‘excellent’ or ‘above average’ organisation – vs. 34% of those who don’t.
https://www.project.co/communication-statistics/#stat-8-5-5

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