Latest news with #meetings
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Your 9-to-5 Feels More Like 24/7, Report Says
One in three employees feels that the pace of work in today's world has become impossible to keep up with, new research by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) found. In its 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft charts the emergence of what it calls a "Frontier Firm," or a company that's "redesigning business processes around AI and agents to scale rapidly, operate with agility, and generate value faster than traditional companies." These new, ultraproductive companies will be hindered by one major roadblock: the seemingly infinite workday. Don't Miss: GoSun's breakthrough rooftop EV charger already has 2,000+ units reserved — become an investor in this $41.3M clean energy brand today. Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Back a bold new approach to cancer treatment with high-growth potential. This infinite workday "starts early, mostly in email, and quickly swells to a focus-sapping flood of messages, meetings, and interruptions," the report says. An average employee is online by six am, reviewing a fraction of the 117 emails they'll receive that day. By the time they're entering peak productivity hours, between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. and again between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., they're knee-deep in meetings and receiving workflow interruptions every two minutes. Things aren't winding down in the evening, either. Microsoft's data shows that there has been a 16% increase in meetings after 8 p.m. year-over-year. Additionally, the average employee receives 50+ teams messages outside of core work hours. Trending: This Jeff Bezos-backed startup will allow you to become a landlord in just 10 minutes, with minimum investments as low as $100. All of this leads to a sense of exhaustion and an increased mental load. Just under half of all employees, 48%, and a full 52% of leaders say their "work feels chaotic and fragmented," thanks to the frenetic pace and constant digital noise. Microsoft says that while the trend of the 24/7 workday is concerning, it doesn't have to be that way. "AI can give us the leverage to redesign the rhythm of work, refocus our teams on new and differentiating work, and fix what has become a seemingly infinite workday. The question isn't whether work will change. It's whether we will," the report reads. Outsourcing mundane tasks is a good place to start. "By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution," the report says. But it's "agent bosses" or "human agent teams" that are the real future of work, the report says. This new generation of professionals will work smarter, not harder, by deploying AI agents to do the most routine aspects of their work so that they can focus on what matters most, "fast, high-quality insights that benefit the entire team." See Next: $100k in assets? Maximize your retirement and cut down on taxes: Schedule your free call with a financial advisor to start your financial journey – no cost, no obligation. Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's how you can earn passive income with just $100. Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? MICROSOFT (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Why Your 9-to-5 Feels More Like 24/7, Report Says originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Your 9-to-5 Feels More Like 24/7, Report Says
One in three employees feels that the pace of work in today's world has become impossible to keep up with, new research by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) found. In its 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft charts the emergence of what it calls a "Frontier Firm," or a company that's "redesigning business processes around AI and agents to scale rapidly, operate with agility, and generate value faster than traditional companies." These new, ultraproductive companies will be hindered by one major roadblock: the seemingly infinite workday. Don't Miss: GoSun's breakthrough rooftop EV charger already has 2,000+ units reserved — become an investor in this $41.3M clean energy brand today. Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Back a bold new approach to cancer treatment with high-growth potential. This infinite workday "starts early, mostly in email, and quickly swells to a focus-sapping flood of messages, meetings, and interruptions," the report says. An average employee is online by six am, reviewing a fraction of the 117 emails they'll receive that day. By the time they're entering peak productivity hours, between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. and again between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., they're knee-deep in meetings and receiving workflow interruptions every two minutes. Things aren't winding down in the evening, either. Microsoft's data shows that there has been a 16% increase in meetings after 8 p.m. year-over-year. Additionally, the average employee receives 50+ teams messages outside of core work hours. Trending: This Jeff Bezos-backed startup will allow you to become a landlord in just 10 minutes, with minimum investments as low as $100. All of this leads to a sense of exhaustion and an increased mental load. Just under half of all employees, 48%, and a full 52% of leaders say their "work feels chaotic and fragmented," thanks to the frenetic pace and constant digital noise. Microsoft says that while the trend of the 24/7 workday is concerning, it doesn't have to be that way. "AI can give us the leverage to redesign the rhythm of work, refocus our teams on new and differentiating work, and fix what has become a seemingly infinite workday. The question isn't whether work will change. It's whether we will," the report reads. Outsourcing mundane tasks is a good place to start. "By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution," the report says. But it's "agent bosses" or "human agent teams" that are the real future of work, the report says. This new generation of professionals will work smarter, not harder, by deploying AI agents to do the most routine aspects of their work so that they can focus on what matters most, "fast, high-quality insights that benefit the entire team." See Next: $100k in assets? Maximize your retirement and cut down on taxes: Schedule your free call with a financial advisor to start your financial journey – no cost, no obligation. Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's how you can earn passive income with just $100. Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? MICROSOFT (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Why Your 9-to-5 Feels More Like 24/7, Report Says originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Your 9-to-5 Feels More Like 24/7, Report Says
One in three employees feels that the pace of work in today's world has become impossible to keep up with, new research by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) found. In its 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft charts the emergence of what it calls a "Frontier Firm," or a company that's "redesigning business processes around AI and agents to scale rapidly, operate with agility, and generate value faster than traditional companies." These new, ultraproductive companies will be hindered by one major roadblock: the seemingly infinite workday. Don't Miss: GoSun's breakthrough rooftop EV charger already has 2,000+ units reserved — become an investor in this $41.3M clean energy brand today. Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Back a bold new approach to cancer treatment with high-growth potential. This infinite workday "starts early, mostly in email, and quickly swells to a focus-sapping flood of messages, meetings, and interruptions," the report says. An average employee is online by six am, reviewing a fraction of the 117 emails they'll receive that day. By the time they're entering peak productivity hours, between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. and again between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., they're knee-deep in meetings and receiving workflow interruptions every two minutes. Things aren't winding down in the evening, either. Microsoft's data shows that there has been a 16% increase in meetings after 8 p.m. year-over-year. Additionally, the average employee receives 50+ teams messages outside of core work hours. Trending: This Jeff Bezos-backed startup will allow you to become a landlord in just 10 minutes, with minimum investments as low as $100. All of this leads to a sense of exhaustion and an increased mental load. Just under half of all employees, 48%, and a full 52% of leaders say their "work feels chaotic and fragmented," thanks to the frenetic pace and constant digital noise. Microsoft says that while the trend of the 24/7 workday is concerning, it doesn't have to be that way. "AI can give us the leverage to redesign the rhythm of work, refocus our teams on new and differentiating work, and fix what has become a seemingly infinite workday. The question isn't whether work will change. It's whether we will," the report reads. Outsourcing mundane tasks is a good place to start. "By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution," the report says. But it's "agent bosses" or "human agent teams" that are the real future of work, the report says. This new generation of professionals will work smarter, not harder, by deploying AI agents to do the most routine aspects of their work so that they can focus on what matters most, "fast, high-quality insights that benefit the entire team." See Next: $100k in assets? Maximize your retirement and cut down on taxes: Schedule your free call with a financial advisor to start your financial journey – no cost, no obligation. Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Here's how you can earn passive income with just $100. Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? MICROSOFT (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Why Your 9-to-5 Feels More Like 24/7, Report Says originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
The Common Company Culture Trap Holding Your Business Back
The common company culture trap holding your business back Too many founders are spending hours in back-to-back meetings about meetings and it's madness. Blank spaces in calendars are being filled with bookings from anyone who wants to catch up. No boundaries, no sense of priority in meetings, and nothing moving forward. According to Microsoft Outlook's productivity report, employees average 6.6 hours of overtime per week. But they get 46% less focus time than they need and they attend 29.6% more meetings than they want to. Founders work even more, averaging 10.2 hours of overtime per week, clocking roughly 50-hour workweeks Every week, 4.7 meetings get canceled or rescheduled when calendar overload becomes real. Business owners and knowledge workers are drowning in coordination and neglecting creation. They aren't thinking straight or focusing on one task. Notifications ping, Slack channels light up, and deep work slips further away. Don't confuse being busy with being useful: avoid the productivity trap I built and sold an agency where we tracked every metric. Revenue per employee, profit margins, client satisfaction scores. But the measurement that predicted growth over all else was how much we were able to create. Social media posts for our clients, emails to our list, and articles for our website. The question at the end of each day was, 'did we ship the thing that moved the needle today?' not 'did we have enough meetings today?' It made all the difference. Cal Newport, computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of books on productivity and focus, argues that "our current definition focuses on visible activity as a proxy for useful effort… email or Slack lets me demonstrate visible activity at any moment of my life." We've created systems where looking productive matters more than being productive. The calendar fills up. The Slack channels multiply. The project boards get complex. But the business stands still. Your team works hard but they're trapped in systems built for show, not growth. Motion feels like progress until you realize you're on a treadmill. Nobody admits that all this activity serves as cover for avoiding the work that scares us: making real decisions, shipping imperfect products, having difficult conversations. Your company's busy culture hides low standards: stop it now When everyone's too busy to think, mediocrity wins. You settle for good enough because there's no time for great. Your team learns that attending equals contributing. They think response time beats quality of thought. Newport calls this "busyness-as-proxy," where "our current definition focuses on visible activity as a proxy for useful effort." It's a culture trap. And it keeps standards low. Here's how to move your business forward without falling for low-ceiling limitations. New tools and apps promise salvation from chaos. Instead they multiply it. Now you need meetings about the project tool. Training for the communication platform. Updates about updates. Each solution creates new problems. Technology has made it easier to fill time with tasks that feel productive but don't move the business forward. Email, instant messaging, and collaborative tools create an always-on expectation that fragments attention and prevents the deep work required for meaningful progress. Only add new tools when you really need to. Consider options carefully before committing. Hire someone to set you up. Do this intentionally, not accidentally. Less is better than too much. Strip everything back to one question: what single outcome would transform your business this quarter? Not five things. One. Revenue growth, product launch, or market expansion. Choose. Clarity beats complexity. One thing beats many. If you chase all the metrics, it's not clear where you should focus. But every business has one north star. The metric that really shows whether you're winning or not. Vanity metrics don't matter as much as this measure. Be prepared to let things slide apart from that. Now you know the metric; identify the action. Gary Keller's bestselling book, The ONE Thing, introduces the question, "What's the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?" Ask this question, then do that thing. When you've done that, do the next thing. And keep going. Live by that question. Cancel meetings that don't advance your one thing. Cut tasks that don't support it. Everyone should know what they should do first. They should understand how their work connects. Including you. Growing businesses run on limits, not options. Cap meetings at three per person weekly. Ban gatherings without decisions to make. Require 24-hour cooling-off periods before adding tools or processes. Don't impulsively execute your week away. The most effective organizations have learned to say no to most things. They understand that every yes blocks something better. They protect their team's attention like the scarce resource it is. While most people are busy with busywork, you should build. Give your people permission to ignore everything except what matters. Hire smart people and allow them the space to think bigger. They solve problems. Innovation happens. Your business moves. Measure outcomes, not hours. Ship products, not schedules. Create systems that work, not complexity to manage. Your business is stalling because people work on the wrong things, not because they don't work hard. Change company culture: create business progress Tomorrow morning, before email or Slack, write the one outcome that changes everything for your business. Make it specific, measurable, real. Review your calendar. Count meetings that advance this outcome. Cancel the rest. Demand the best for yourself with the ruthless intensity that will make your mission advance. Your business success demands brutal focus on what matters and courage to ignore everything else. Most people won't do this. But you're not most people.
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Wellpin Introduces Smart Meeting Tools to Transform Time Management in the Workplace
You're in another meeting. - It seems important, but your mind is busy with deadlines, tasks, and personal errands. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, this happens all too often in modern business. Meetings drag on, participants show up late, conversations go off track, and in the end, there's no clear decision or outcome. The result: Wasted time, fatigue, and distraction instead of productive work. Meetings should help organize work, not get in the way. Today, we'll show you how to turn meetings into a powerful tool for efficiency — with smart time management and modern technologies that help you work faster, smarter, and achieve more. The Current State of Business Meetings: Common Challenges Professionals dedicate numerous weeks to meetings, which they believe could be better spent on their direct job responsibilities. Key facts: As a result, companies face major financial losses, employees experience excessive pressure, and have less time available to focus on their core responsibilities.. Virtual Meetings: A New Dimension of Challenges Offline meetings have long become a symbol of inefficiency: delays, long conversations going nowhere, shortage of meeting rooms, conflicting calendars, and wasted time on logistics. Often, half of the participants come unprepared, resulting in vague agreements and lost time. Online tools such as screen sharing, chat, automatic recording, and instant access to materials turn every meeting into a managed and productive process. Virtual meetings instill discipline, speed up decision-making, and teach respect for each other's time. In a world where speed is a key resource, the virtual format is not just convenient — it's essential. Standard Problems in Meeting Management Time management issues in meetings often stem from a lack of clear planning and preparation. When meetings are held without a specific agenda, they tend to drift aimlessly and fail to deliver meaningful results. Participants may go off-topic, and discussions can become disorganized and unproductive. Additionally, poor control over meeting duration frequently leads to sessions running overtime, which disrupts upcoming work responsibilities and undermines overall organizational discipline. To avoid these setbacks, it is useful to follow a few essential practices: Another common problem is the lack of proper documentation and follow-up tasks, which results in the meeting's progress quickly fading away. Without action items and accountability, decisions are easily forgotten and topics often resurface in future sessions. Moreover, inviting too many participants leads to reduced focus and more complex discussions, making it harder to reach conclusions efficiently. Time Management Strategies for More Efficient Meetings Organizations achieve better productivity and reduced employee stress when they adopt suitable time management methods to improve their meeting processes. The following essential methods create substantial improvements: Strategic Planning Before the Meeting An effective meeting starts long before participants gather. First, consider whether the goal can be achieved through email or online tools instead of a meeting. If a meeting is necessary, prepare a clear agenda with time limits for each topic, invite only those who are essential to the discussion, and share all relevant materials in advance so participants can arrive well-prepared. To improve time management in meetings, focus on three core strategies: The Wellpin scheduler meeting supports all of these strategies. It finds optimal time slots based on participant availability, provides personal booking pages to simplify scheduling, and automates the delivery of invitations, agendas, and reminders—helping teams save time and focus on what truly matters. The Role of Technology in Meeting Time Management The integration of modern technology tools boosts meeting efficiency through automatic task management and better coordination along with data-driven meeting pattern analysis. Organizations can transform their meeting processes through suitable technological solutions that schedule meetings and perform them while handling follow-up activities. These helpful suggestions can reduce stress in your professional life. Schedule Maker Applications Advanced scheduling applications go beyond basic calendar functions and significantly improve team time coordination. The Wellpin scheduler uses artificial intelligence to find optimal meeting times by analyzing participant availability, preferences, time zones, and existing commitments, eliminating traditional scheduling delays and helping to manage time effectively. Key solutions offered by Wellpin include: Wellpin also provides detailed analytics dashboards to track meeting frequency, duration, and participant data, helping organizations improve their meeting culture through time analysis and data-driven insights. These features enhance time management, simplify scheduling, and boost overall meeting efficiency. Meeting Productivity Tools Specialized applications can streamline various aspects of meetings, complementing scheduling platforms like Wellpin: Collaborative Note-Taking: Platforms that allow multiple participants to contribute to documentation simultaneously ensure comprehensive capture of discussions and decisions. When integrated with Wellpin's scheduling system, these notes can be automatically attached to meeting records for easy reference. Timer Applications: Visual countdown tools help facilitators manage agenda timing and keep discussions on track. Wellpin incorporates timing features that can be preset according to agenda items, with gentle notifications when time limits are approaching. Decision Documentation Systems: Software that tracks decisions, responsibilities, and deadlines ensures accountability and follow-through. Wellpin's follow-up capabilities allow meeting organizers to assign action items directly from the platform and track completion status. Meeting Templates: Wellpin offers customizable templates for recurring meetings, preserving agenda structures, participant lists, and resource requirements to maintain consistency and save preparation time. By leveraging comprehensive platforms like Wellpin alongside specialized meeting tools, organizations can create a technological ecosystem that supports efficient meetings from planning through execution to follow-up, ultimately reclaiming valuable time for productive work. This approach gives you more free time for personal activities and helps balance your work and school responsibilities. Conclusion Organizations can achieve substantial improvement by managing time during meetings effectively. Businesses that implement strategic planning with effective conduct protocols and thorough follow-up processes will transform meetings from necessary evils into productive tools that advance objectives and respect everyone's valuable time. Success in meeting efficiency requires organizations to treat it as an ongoing evaluation and refinement process. Organizations dedicated to this approach will achieve both time savings and better decision making and stronger team bonds while developing more engaging work environments. By focusing on one task at a time and implementing these suggestions, you can take advantage of these principles in all aspects of your life. Media Contact Company Name: Wellpin Contact Person: David Beckham Email: Send Email City: New York Country: United States Website: Press Release Distributed by To view the original version on ABNewswire visit: Wellpin Introduces Smart Meeting Tools to Transform Time Management in the Workplace
