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# What's the ROI of Your Employee Directory Tool?
- URL: https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/whats-the-roi-of-your-employee-directory-tool/
- Published: 2022-07-22T08:41:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-14T10:03:20.000Z
- Description: Is employee directory software worth it? Find out about the return on investment of your corporate directory solution.
- Author: Lawrence Cawood
- Tags: Employee Directory Guide, Employee Directory

[Blog](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/) \> [Employee Directory Guide](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/employee-directory-guide/) \> What's the ROI of Your Employee Directory Tool? 

The ROI of an [employee directory](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/employee-directory-guide/) is hard to measure.

That's because every [employee search](https://www.vinewave.com/onedirectory/enterprise-people-search?ref=onedirectory.com) has a relatively small impact that's spread across a large number of people over a long period of time.

When your teams are searching for people hundreds of times a day, which is quite typical in most mid-sized organizations, there's a lot of time wasted if you're using an inefficient directory solution.

[Research](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy?ref=onedirectory.com) from McKinsey shows that the average worker spends "*nearly 20 percent of their time tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks.*"

![IDC analysis of average work weeks and productivity](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/2020/09/mckinsey-social-economy.png)

[The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy?ref=onedirectory.com)

In other words, the average employee spends 1 out of every 5 work days just searching for people!

That's valuable time that should instead be going to **meaningful work**. Like helping your customers, and working towards your company's goals.

A 2018 Panopto study of 1,001 American employees (I wonder who that last person was 🤔) across a variety of industries found that employees spend [an average of 5 hours every week](https://www.panopto.com/blog/how-much-time-is-lost-to-knowledge-sharing-inefficiencies-at-work?ref=onedirectory.com) waiting to get in touch with people that have the unique knowledge they need.

Interestingly, 20 percent of workers reported *duplicating the work of others* because they’d been unable to reach the colleague in question.

![workplace productivity report](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c1/11/c111eebf-c6f2-428f-81ae-d07ef88b544a/content/images/2020/09/2018-07-24_1450.png)

[Workplace Productivity Report: How Much Time Is Lost To Knowledge Sharing Inefficiencies?](https://www.panopto.com/blog/how-much-time-is-lost-to-knowledge-sharing-inefficiencies-at-work/?ref=onedirectory.com)

What a waste of time.

## Can an Employee Directory Solve These Issues?

Not all of them, of course.

Workplace communication is a big topic and an employee directory solves one part of that: the "connecting people" part.

What we know is that making it easier to find people saves real time and real money. But the tool is only half of it — the data underneath has to exist first. In OneDirectory's tenant analysis, Microsoft 365 profile fields average just 30.8% complete, and the Manager field is completed in only 42% of profiles. Those are opening figures. See [where those same tenants ended up](https://www.onedirectory.com/blog/employee-directory-data-problem-is-fixable/) after the cleanup work. That's the actual starting line for most companies: before a directory can pay for itself, it has to close a 69-point data gap.