A support ticket comes back for a rewrite. A client call runs twenty minutes over because the first explanation did not land. After a stand-up, three people message each other to ask what was decided.
None of these moments shows up on a report as lost time. Most organisations never count them, so nobody knows how much of the working week they take.
How do you reduce time lost to poor communication at work?
Count where work gets redone because a message did not land, separate the causes, then practise the conversations behind the redo.
When leaders want more productive time, they usually start with a budget request for another hire or another tool. A new hire adds capacity, but joins the same meetings and queues where time is already being lost.
A more useful question is which conversations your team already pays for twice. The answer sits in small, repeated moments: a clarifying question that should not have been needed, a meeting that needed a second round, a ticket that bounced back. Each one looks minor. Across a team, they are not.
How much time does poor communication cost a team?
In one US survey, business leaders estimated that their teams lose 7.47 hours a week to poor communication, nearly a full working day.
The Harris Poll ran the survey for Grammarly in October 2021, with 251 business leaders and 1,001 knowledge workers in the US (Grammarly/Harris Poll, 2022). It is the leaders' own estimate, not measured time, and Grammarly sells communication tools. Read it as a view of how large the problem looks from the inside.
The meetings where this happens have also become more international. Microsoft's analysis of Microsoft 365 activity found that 30% of meetings now span more than one time zone, up 8 percentage points since 2021 (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025; data to February 2025, excluding education and EU customers). If your teams work across countries, some of those calls involve colleagues speaking English as a second language.
Neither figure isolates spoken English. The share of lost time that comes from difficulty explaining something in English varies from team to team, and it is the share this article deals with. Measuring it is the first step.
How do you find where communication time is lost?
Ask team leads to tally every redo for two weeks, then sort each one by cause before anyone proposes a fix.
A simple tally is enough to start. For each redo, record what had to be done again, roughly how long it took and who was involved.
Then separate the causes. A redo can come from an unclear brief, from missing information, or from difficulty explaining something in English under pressure. Only the third belongs to an English programme, so be honest about the split: it tells you how much of the loss practice can address.
Illustrative scenario. A 40-person customer support team tallies its redos for two weeks. Team leads log 60 returned tickets. They mark 25 as caused by an agent struggling to explain a fix clearly in English on the call, and the other 35 as missing information or unclear internal briefs.
| If you see | Do | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Tickets returned because the customer did not follow the explanation | Practise explaining that fix out loud, in the words agents use on calls | Team lead, with L&D |
| Meetings that need a second round | Share an agenda and a written summary; practise stating the decision before the call ends | Meeting owner |
| The same clarifying question, asked again and again | Fix the brief or template first; if the brief is clear, practise the explanation | Process owner, then L&D |
| Redos caused by missing information | Fix how the information reaches the team; an English programme will not help here | Operations lead |
How do you put lost communication time into numbers finance will accept?
Multiply the hours spent on English-related redos by an average hourly cost for those roles, and show every assumption.
A number a CFO can check gets funded more easily than a description of "communication problems". Keep each assumption visible so anyone can change it.
Illustrative scenario, continued. Assume each of the 25 English-related redos took 30 minutes of agent and team-lead time, at a loaded cost of $20 an hour. That is 12.5 hours and $250 over two weeks, or about $6,500 a year if the pattern holds for 52 weeks.
Your result may be smaller or larger. Either way, it replaces an industry estimate with a baseline from your own team that you can track.
How do you practise the conversations that cause the redo?
Build practice around the exact conversation behind the redo, such as the support call or the negotiation, instead of a general course.
A support agent who has to stay clear with an upset caller needs practice that looks like that call. A sales representative who loses the thread of a negotiation needs practice that looks like that negotiation.
ELSA Business gives employees AI-powered speaking practice with individual feedback, built around situations relevant to their role.
Meeting Companion adds a second view. It evaluates an employee's spoken English during real Zoom and Google Meet calls across pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary and intonation. These meeting scores are calculated separately from practice scores because they measure English in a different context, and the gaps they show can inform the next round of practice.
Illustrative scenario, continued. The support team turns its five most frequently returned explanations into practice scenarios and keeps the tally running.
What results have ELSA's enterprise customers seen?
Across ELSA's enterprise deployments, employees save 3+ hours a week, with roughly 78% less communication-related rework and a 300% ROI from productivity gained.
These figures come from ELSA's own deployment data. They are not an independent study, and your results will depend on your teams, your roles and how the programme is run.
That is why the tally comes first. Your own baseline shows how much of that potential applies to your teams, and it gives finance a number to check the result against.
How often should you review progress?
Review the redo tally every two weeks with team leads and quarterly with leadership, and report rework instead of training hours.
| When | Who | What to review |
|---|---|---|
| Every two weeks | Team leads | Redo tally by cause; which conversations to practise next |
| Monthly | L&D and team leads | Practice participation and progress for the teams in scope; the English-related redo count |
| Quarterly | Leadership and finance | Hours and cost of English-related redos against the baseline; whether to extend to another team |
Hours logged in a training tool show that people turned up. A fall in returned tickets and repeat meetings is the signal that something changed, although other factors can move it too.
Where does this approach fall short?
A two-week tally is a rough measure, and better practice scores do not prove that a workplace redo will stop.
Team leads will miss some redos and disagree about others. A redo often has more than one cause, and assigning it to English is a judgement call.
Practice scores and Meeting Companion scores measure spoken English. They do not tell you whether a customer understood the fix. Only your tally can show that.
Mistakes to avoid
- Counting only the redos that are easy to log, such as returned tickets, and ignoring meetings.
- Sending every cause to the English programme, including briefs and information gaps that need a process fix.
- Reporting training hours as the result.
- Treating one quarter's drop as proof. Keep the tally running.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as time lost to poor communication?
Count work that has to be done again because a message did not land the first time. Typical examples are tickets returned for a rewrite, meetings that need a second round and clarifying questions that should not have been needed. Normal meeting time does not count. Only the extra time caused by a message that had to be repeated or corrected does.
Is 7.47 hours a week a reliable figure for my team?
Use it as context, not as a benchmark. It is an estimate from 251 US business leaders surveyed by The Harris Poll for Grammarly in October 2021, and it covers communication in general. It does not isolate spoken English. A two-week tally of your own team's redos gives you a baseline you can track.
Can an English programme fix every communication redo?
No. Some redos come from unclear briefs or missing information, and those need a process fix. An English programme addresses only the redos caused by difficulty explaining something in English under pressure. Sorting each redo by cause before choosing a fix tells you how much of the loss practice can realistically address.
Do ELSA Business customers recover time lost to poor communication?
ELSA's own deployment data shows employees saving 3+ hours a week, with roughly 78% less communication-related rework and a 300% ROI from productivity gained. This is ELSA's data, not an independent study, and results depend on the team, the roles and how the programme is run. A two-week tally of your own redos shows how much applies to you.
What does Meeting Companion measure?
Meeting Companion is available on ELSA Business for Zoom and Google Meet. It evaluates an employee's spoken English during those calls, across pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary and intonation. Its scores are calculated separately from practice scores because they measure English in a different context. It does not measure whether a customer understood the explanation, which is why the redo tally stays the main measure.
Count the redo before you add headcount
Lost communication time hides in redone work, not in a budget line. Tally the redos, sort them by cause, put the English-related share in finance terms, practise the conversations behind it, and report rework instead of attendance.
Related reading: Should English training be mandatory for employees? and Corporate English training software: why a weekly class gives each employee about five minutes of speaking practice.
To see how ELSA Business adds speaking practice for the conversations behind your redos, book a demo.