Data is playing a bigger role in how organisations in Singapore do business, but employees are struggling to keep up.

A whopping 84 per cent of employees surveyed said they felt overwhelmed or unhappy when working with data, putting Singapore at the No. 2 spot among nine countries polled. India topped the list.

Nearly half, or 47 per cent, of the Singapore respondents reported taking at least one day of sick leave in the last two years owing to stress from information, data and technology issues.

Also, 73 per cent said data overload has contributed to workplace stress, higher than the global average of 61 per cent.

To avoid this, 40 per cent said they would find an alternative method to complete the task without using data at all, said a new report released today.

The survey of 9,000 full-time employees, including 1,000 in Singapore, was conducted last September, and was commissioned by consulting firm Accenture and data solutions company Qlik.

The other countries in the survey are Australia, Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

The survey also found that just 16 per cent in Singapore are confident of their data literacy skills.

According to Qlik, data literacy is the ability to read, work with, analyse and communicate with data.

"From speaking to business leaders and customers on data literacy in the past 12 months, we do know that there are high expectations for employees across all departments, not just number-native roles like finance or sales operations, to work with and utilise data," said Ms Suganthi Shivkumar, Qlik's managing director of Asean, India and South Korea.

"This can be overwhelming for employees and can amplify their stress levels if they are not confident in their ability to read, understand, question and work with data."

Qlik and Accenture did not provide a breakdown of responses by company size and employee age.

They said productivity was affected by employees' struggle with data. Companies in Singapore lose an average of more than seven working days per employee - 56.5 hours - each year due to procrastination and sick leave for data-related stress.

This equates to an estimated $5.1 billion in lost productivity each year, they said in a press release.

Accenture's Data Business Group global lead and group technology officer Sanjeev Vohra said many companies need to reinvent their approach to data governance, analysis and decision making by ensuring workers have the necessary tools and training.

"Data-driven companies that focus on continuous learning will be more productive and gain a competitive edge," he said.

Ms Shivkumar recommended that companies set up formal data literacy training programmes, provide the appropriate tools to analyse data, or have a team that can clean and prepare data for employees to use.