Workaround debt is the time a business spends each week doing by hand what its systems should do: re-keying, reconciling, chasing, assembling, checking and forwarding. It's measured in hours per week, and it builds up in layers nobody went back to.
Last reviewed 30 September 2026
No business sets out to build a workaround economy. It settles. Every system bought and half-adopted, every process replaced but never switched off, stays where it was put. New layers press down on old ones. The people doing the work stay on the surface, and the workarounds grow there, because the layers underneath block the path to what the business actually needs.
Every layer was a sensible decision at the time. It only hardened because nobody went back.
| Where | State | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | Live | The workarounds. The spreadsheet, the group chat, the forward, the thing held in one person's head. |
| Strata | Dormant and dead | Systems and processes still in place, used partly (dormant) or not at all (dead). Nobody switched them off. |
| Core | Intent | What the business meant to do. Always there, only buried. |
Some signs you'll recognise: a licence renewing for software nobody has opened this year. A dashboard last viewed on the day it launched. An AI pilot that impressed everyone and changed nothing.
No. The workaround isn't a symptom of bad staff. It's a review of your systems, written by the people who use them. People keep the business running from the surface; the debt sits in the layers underneath them.
In hours per week, layer by layer. What we observe and time outranks system data, and system data outranks what people tell us. Claims count only when a second source agrees, and where the evidence disagrees, the lower figure wins. The result is a baseline, measured again the same way 90 days after anything is built. The full method.
A tool that doesn't reach the core becomes another layer. It's bought, trialled and left in place on top of everything else, and the workaround comes back on top of it.
One page per workaround we see most often: where it sits, what's underneath it, what it usually costs in hours per week, and what the fix is. Ranges are illustrative until the Workaround Debt Index has measured them.
Tell us what you're working around, and we'll come back to you within two working days.