AI is helping UK workers move faster, but new research from Atlassian suggests that businesses are yet to solve the harder productivity challenge of helping teams work better together.
According to Atlassian’s global State of Teams 2026 research, featuring insights from 2,000+ UK knowledge workers and 170+ global Fortune 1000 executives, 84% of UK knowledge workers say they now use AI at work, and among those using it, 71% say AI makes them work faster. But while AI is accelerating individual output, the systems around that work are not keeping pace. In fact, 70% of UK workers rate their organisation’s processes and workflows for effectively using AI as ‘okay’ or ‘poor’, suggesting many businesses are still layering AI onto ways of working that were not designed for it.
The result is that AI is helping people produce more, but teams are still struggling to turn that extra output into co-ordinated progress.
UK workers also point to collaboration barriers that are slowing them down. More than a third (83%) say unclear or conflicting goals and priorities get in the way of effective collaboration between teams, while 79% aren’t aware of what other teams are working on. And 86% say there is no time or capacity to coordinate because everyone is in execution mode. And this has a big impact: the research found that the inefficiencies caused by disconnected workflows cost Fortune 500 companies an estimated US$161 billion annually.
