The nine-to-five working day is becoming rarer
More and more employees are checking their emails early in the morning or late in the evening. The productivity data analyzed by Microsoft also reveals how often employees are interrupted while trying to focus on their work—and how little time they allow themselves to prepare for their meeting presentations.
Microsoft reads an "increase in endless working hours" from these results. This is because 40 percent of employees check their emails before 6 am. Almost a third (29 percent) of active employees access their mailbox again at around 10 pm.
Other findings also show that more and more employees are turning away from the traditional office day (from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.). Microsoft now sees a third peak in the late evening in addition to the usual morning and afternoon peaks. In addition, the number of meetings after 8 p.m. has risen by 16 percent year-on-year. Incidentally, most meetings (23 percent) take place on Tuesdays.
There has also been an increase in weekend work, writes Microsoft. According to its data, 20 percent of people working at the weekend check their emails before midday - both on Saturdays and Sundays. Microsoft draws particular attention to the 5 percent of employees who continue to work after 6 p.m. on Sundays and comments: "Sunday anxiety is real and measurable".
Distraction and procrastination
Another finding of the study: on average, employees are interrupted 275 times during the course of a working day by meetings, emails or chat notifications. This corresponds to one interruption every 2 minutes. Half of all meetings take place during the most productive hours of the day (9-11 am and 1-15 pm), leaving little room for focused work, writes Microsoft. In addition, 57 percent of all meetings are spontaneous calls without a calendar invitation. However, the company also notes an interesting fun fact about scheduled meetings: 10 minutes before the respective appointment, edits to PowerPoint presentation documents increase - by 122 percent.
Marc Holitscher, National Technology Officer at Microsoft Switzerland, sees the findings of the study as confirmation of what many employees have long felt: "The boundaries between work and private life are becoming increasingly blurred. The paradox created by endless working hours is particularly striking: although we have more communication tools at our disposal than ever before, 48 percent of employees feel that their work is chaotic and disjointed. The solution does not lie in even more effort, but in a fundamental rethink of how we work." Holitscher believes that artificial intelligence can help here by taking over routine tasks and allowing employees to focus on what actually creates added business value. (René Jaun/fsi)
