Content Experience is a Productivity System
As internal content leaders, we view productivity differently than most.
Productivity is driven by retrieval + confidence + action, not just writing quality.
In other words, employee productivity depends on whether they can find the right answer quickly (retrieval) + do they trust it enough to act without checking (confidence), and does it clearly tell them what to do next (action).
The productivity tax most companies underestimate
Broken content experiences force employees into a productivity loop:
Search
Second-guess
Ask someone
Open a ticket
Wait
Do it again next time
And it’s widespread.
Nearly half of digital workers struggle to find the information or data they need to do their jobs, according to Gartner.
If you thought that was bad, digital debt is costing us innovation, with 62% of people say they struggle with too much time spent searching for information in their workday.
We’ve previously said that content debt (which is also digital debt) is the silent killer of employee trust.
Which means content experience is much more than a “comms problem.”
Why content experience drives employee engagement (and engagement drives productivity)
When employees can’t find trusted answers, work becomes heavier than it needs to be. People spend more energy navigating ambiguity than finding answers.
You can see how that impacts productivity, right? Would you rather have your chief scientist figuring out policies and benefits changes or curing diseases?
Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy $8.8 trillion in lost productivity, or about 9% of global GDP.
McKinsey’s research on employee experience similarly points to a major performance gap: employees reporting a positive employee experience have 16x the engagement of those with a negative experience - and are 8x more likely to want to stay.
Want to eliminate your company’s contribution to $8.8 trillion in lost productivity? Focus on content experience.
The hidden mechanics: How poor content experience destroys output
“Time-to-answer” becomes “time-to-everything”
Every extra minute spent searching or validating guidance is time spent away from real work.
Confidence drops, and rework rises
Employees don’t just want answers - they want answers they can trust. When trust is low, the same task gets done twice:
Once to attempt it
Again to confirm it was done correctly
Self-service fails silently
Organizations invest heavily in knowledge bases and portals, yet usage lags. IDC noted that even among large companies that have implemented knowledge management, usage can be surprisingly low - 45% adoption in one IDC research finding.
If people don’t trust the experience, they won’t use the system - no matter how much content exists.
AI raises the stakes (fast)
AI search and chatbots reduce friction, which is exactly how they expose content debt.
If your knowledge base contains outdated or conflicting guidance, AI can surface it confidently, strip context, and scale the problem instantly.
In other words: AI amplifies instead of fixes the content experience.
What “high productivity content experience” looks like
A productive content experience has five qualities:
Findable: employee-language titles, search-optimized structure
Trustworthy: accurate, current, validated, and consistent across sources
Actionable: task-complete in one visit, with clear next steps
Owned: someone is accountable, and review cadence is real
Safe for AI: content eligibility rules prevent risky content from being surfaced
This may sound like a writing project, but it’s actually an operating model.
The bottom line
Employee productivity isn’t only about effort. It’s about clarity at the moment of work.
If employees can’t find trusted answers quickly, they will:
Ask someone
Open a case
Work around the system
Slow down
Disengage
And the organization pays for it in lost time, lost trust, and lost output.
——
If our perspective resonates with you, The Employee Content Experience Playbook goes deeper into how employees actually experience content and why most organizations misdiagnose the problem.
It’s designed to reframe thinking, not prescribe solutions.
