Even as the right to disconnect movement has picked up steam, true work-life balance is still hard to come by for many employees. Fielding emails and other work-related messages after hours continues to be the norm across workplaces, despite ample evidence that it can contribute to burnout and actually decrease productivity.
Part of the issue may be that the average workday is punctuated by a mounting number of drains on productivity. A new report from Microsoft, which compiled input from 31,000 workers across more than 30 countries, sheds light on the scale of interruptions and hurdles workers are currently facing on the job, as well as the degree to which the average workday has stretched beyond traditional business hours.
The price of near-constant interruptions
While 53% of leaders say they want to see a spike in productivity, the overwhelming majority of employees and managers alike—about 80% of workers globally—claim that they don’t have the time or energy to effectively do their jobs.
Employees say they are being interrupted near constantly during the workday, juggling emails, meetings, or real-time messages every two minutes. That can amount to 275 daily interruptions on the whole, when taking into account the additional time employees spend on the job beyond standard working hours.
In fact, the report also captures a marked increase in the number of pings that workers receive after hours: Chats outside of the 9-to-5 window increased by 15% year over year, yielding an average of 58 messages when tallied over the course of four weeks.
An expanding workday
Even meetings appear to be happening around the clock, according to the report, in part because so many companies now employ people who are working across time zones. Meetings that take place after 8 p.m. had increased by 16% year over year, and 30% of meetings involve employees in different time zones.
Part of this shift could also be driven by the fact that the majority of meetings—60%—are unscheduled and convened on an ad hoc basis. (Also of note: The number of PowerPoint edits jump by 122% in the 10 minutes leading up to a meeting, a stark contrast to PowerPoint activity in the hours prior.)
What could help reduce burnout
All this points to a broader disconnect between the business needs of many companies and what their workforce can reasonably accommodate, a strain that both employees and leaders seem to be feeling. According to Microsoft’s findings, 48% of employees and 52% of leaders claim their workload is “chaotic and fragmented.”
The report makes the case for why companies will need to use AI agents to bridge the gap, and almost half of all leaders have already said using “digital labor” to augment the existing capabilities of their workforce is a top priority for the next 18 months. But AI alone won’t alleviate the many pains of modern work for employees or managers—and it certainly won’t put a stop to superfluous meetings overnight.
