It’s impossible to tally how many meetings we have each week that — as the popular joke goes — could have been an email.
But new research from Microsoft shows how out of hand our work calendars have gotten: Since February 2020, people are in 3 times more Microsoft Teams meetings and calls per week at work, a whopping 192% increase. The heaviest Teams users are spending close to 8 hours, or an entire workday, each week in online meetings alone.
Remote work during the pandemic, which took away opportunities for spontaneous in-office encounters, led to meeting creep — now, three years later, companies are trying to course-correct, finding ways to make in-person and virtual meetings more efficient and less frequent.
Meetings, at their core, aren’t the issue, says Colette Stallbaumer, the general manager for Microsoft 365 and the “future of work” at Microsoft. Their basic premise, to brainstorm new ideas, update employees on important happenings at the company, or involve them in decision-making, can help workers feel engaged.
It’s when meetings are long, poorly run, and don’t have a clear purpose that they become a source of stress for employees and their managers, she explains.
In fact, inefficient meetings are the No. 1 workplace distraction that hurts productivity, followed closely by having too many meetings, according to a Microsoft survey of 31,000 workers across the globe, which was conducted between February and March 2023.
The ‘opportunity cost’ of having too many meetings
The onslaught of meetings is exhausting workers and leaving insufficient time for “deep work,” on tasks that require a higher level of focus with no distractions, says Stallbaumer.
Nearly two in three people, regardless if they are working remotely, in-person or on a hybrid schedule, say they struggle with having the time and energy to do their job because of meetings and email bloat, Microsoft reports.
“There’s an opportunity cost that comes with the pressure to always be online,…
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