Workplace interruptions cost London businesses more than the combined GDP of Malta, Monaco, Iceland, and Cyprus each year
London, UK – 1 December 2025 – London businesses are haemorrhaging £105 billion a year due to constant workplace interruptions, according to a new analysis by Nasstar, a leading UK technology company.
The research reveals that a typical office worker in London faces some kind of disruption or interruption every four minutes during normal work hours, which equates to 120 interruptions each day from ad hoc meetings, emails, and chats that are fragmenting focus and decimating business productivity.
But while standard generative AI tools like ChatGPT only risk adding to this cognitive overload, analysis by Nasstar suggests that Microsoft’s agentic AI platform, Copilot Studio, just might be the solution.
“The data speaks for itself: London businesses are facing a productivity crisis on an unprecedented scale, collectively losing £105 billion a year not because of distractions outside of work but because the tools we use within the workplace are becoming increasingly noisy and distracting,” said Sean Morris, Chief Technology Officer at Nasstar. “But the solution isn’t to just abandon email or Microsoft Teams, or implement a company-wide policy that bans ad hoc meetings.
“The real answer involves getting those workplace tools that we’re already using every day to work for us instead of against us… and for that we need to embrace intelligent automation in our day-to-day work.”
The scale of the productivity crisis for London businesses
Nasstar dug into Microsoft’s Work Trend Index data to reveal just how much workplace interruptions are undermining business productivity in London:
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At least 120 interruptions per day: Microsoft’s research shows office workers are interrupted an average of every 2 minutes during core work hours. For their own UK cost analysis, Nasstar used a more conservative estimate of one interruption every 4 minutes (120 per day), meaning the true productivity cost to London businesses could potentially be even higher than this £105 billion a year estimate.
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60% of meetings are unplanned: Ad hoc meetings can dramatically disrupt workflows and undermine focus.
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58 after-hours messages: Daily communications outside the normal 9 to 5 have increased by 15% year-on-year, according to Microsoft’s Work Trend data.
The pounds-and-pence cost for London: £105 billion a year
Nasstar’s analysis indicates that these constant workplace interruptions result in a 25% drop in business productivity across London’s office-based roles.
To put the scale of that lost productivity into context, it’s:
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Equivalent to the entire economy of Luxembourg: Luxembourg has an annual GDP of £100 billion.
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Like 1.5 million London office workers being paid to do nothing: At an average annual salary of £66,000, London’s £105 billion in lost productivity equates to 1.59 million office workers being paid to do nothing all year round.
“To put the scale of that lost productivity into context, it amounts to more than the annual GDP of Malta, Monaco, Iceland, and Cyprus… combined,” said Sean Morris, Nasstar’s CTO.
“But it’s important to remember that we’re not talking about frivolous distractions that companies can easily block, like employees scrolling on Facebook or watching videos on TikTok. These workplace interruptions come from legitimate work communications, and they often arise because of requests that are essential, decisions that need to be made, or information that is required by someone else in the company.
“London businesses aren’t losing £105 billion a year because people are slacking off… they’re losing it because our current workplace tools are fundamentally broken, and without agents it’s likely that generative AI will just add to the noise.”
Killing the productivity killer: The “agentic” advantage
While standard AI chatbots and generative AI models might seem like solutions to this productivity crisis, they risk creating more digital noise for employees.
By contrast, Microsoft Copilot Studio leverages AI agents to complete tasks autonomously rather than simply spitting out content.
“The real breakthrough with Copilot Studio is that it doesn’t just understand what you’re asking, it actually does something about it,” says Ash Ward, Comms Capability Lead at Nasstar. “Instead of generating yet another email or calendar entry, these agents can get to the root of the problem, resolving what might once have taken five emails, a few Teams messages, and half an hour of back-and-forth.”
How agentic AI could help London businesses save billions
With over 230,000 organisations already creating AI agents through Copilot Studio, the technology has now moved far beyond experimentation, towards practical business use cases. For London businesses facing mounting productivity pressures, the question now isn’t whether to adopt AI agents, but how quickly they can implement them effectively.
As the data makes clear, London businesses can’t afford to wait. The productivity killer is real, it’s expensive, and it’s getting worse.
Notes to the Editor
About the analysis:
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Productivity loss was calculated based on a conservative estimate of workplace interruptions occurring once every 4 minutes during an 8-hour workday, with an average ‘resumption lag’ of 1 minute before workers refocus on the interrupted task, resulting in approximately 25% lost productivity per day. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index estimates the interruption frequency at once every 2 minutes, which means our UK cost analysis is likely to be conservative.
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The Office for National Statistics’ Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) groupings were used to estimate the number of white-collar workers (since those workers would be most impacted by these types of workplace interruptions):
SOC Group |
Proportion of employment |
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SOC 1–3: Managers, Professionals, Associate Professionals |
52.7% |
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SOC 4: Administrative & Secretarial |
9.3% |
|
SOC 7: Sales & Customer Service (much of which is likely be office, call centre or headquarters) |
5.9% |
|
Total |
67.9% of employment in white collar, office-based roles |
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The overall cost of lost productivity was then found by calculating 67.9% of London’s GDP figure (£617.915 billion), and dividing the resulting number by 4 to arrive at a 25% loss.
About Nasstar:
Nasstar is a leading Microsoft Partner and Secure Networks specialist with over 25 years of experience helping organisations navigate cutting-edge technology. Nasstar supports hundreds of customers across financial services, healthcare, the public sector, and other industries. As a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Azure in ‘Data & AI’ and ‘Infrastructure’ categories, and member of the Microsoft FastTrack Partner Community, Nasstar delivers comprehensive Microsoft 365, Teams, Azure, and AI solutions.
