Write an article about How the 24-hour work day is becoming the new norm .Organize the content with appropriate headings and subheadings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6), Retain any existing tags from The workday now extends well into the evenings and over weekends. (Envato Elements pic)
PARIS: The days of working from 9am to 5pm seem to be over. Between checking emails at 6am and meetings that drag on until 10pm, employees now find themselves navigating what Microsoft calls the “infinite workday.”
Far from improving performance, this phenomenon fragments attention and exhausts teams.
The tech giant recently released the latest edition of its “Work Trend Index,” a comprehensive analysis based on anonymized data from millions of Microsoft 365 users worldwide.
This report confirms what many workers experience on a daily basis: the boundaries between work and personal life are blurring at an alarming rate, turning each day into an exhausting marathon.
Evidence of this can be found in the early hours of the day.
At 6am, 40% of workers are already checking their work email to anticipate the day’s priorities, a habit that reflects growing anxiety about the daily workload.
And the onslaught continues from then on. Each employee receives an average of 117 emails per day, most of which are read in less than a minute.
“Mass emails with 20+ recipients are up 7% in the past year, while one-on-one threads are on the decline (-5%),” explained the Microsoft report.
At 8am, Teams take over, with 153 messages received per person per working day.
This information overload creates a vicious circle where employees develop compulsive checking habits, hoping to regain control of a situation that is slipping away from them.
Meetings can eat away at concentration
The real problem arises during the most productive hours. Microsoft reveals that 50% of meetings are concentrated between 9am and 11am and 1pm and 3pm, precisely when people are naturally most focused.
This collision between biological rhythms and organisational constraints produces a cruel paradox: the moments most conducive to in-depth work are monopolized by meetings that fragment our attention.
But meetings aren’t the only issue. Every two minutes, an employee is interrupted by an email or notification. That’s 275 interruptions per day, which destroys any possibility of sustained concentration.
In this constant chaos, 48% of employees describe their work as “chaotic and fragmented”, a sentiment shared by 52% of leaders.
As if that weren’t enough, the working day now extends well into the evenings and weekends.
Meetings scheduled after 8pm have jumped by 16% in one year. At 10pm, 29% of workers are back checking their email.
The weekend is no exception. Nearly 20% of employees check their emails before noon on Saturdays and Sundays, turning days off into an unofficial extension of the working week.
Even more revealing, 5% return to their email inboxes on Sunday evenings after 6pm. This Sunday anxiety, known as the “Sunday scaries,” reflects growing apprehension about the week ahead.
Study finds nearly 20% of employees check emails before noon on Saturdays and Sundays, turning off days into work days. (Envato Elements pic)
Rethinking the pace of work
This extension of working hours reveals a troubling paradox. While remote workers often see these late hours as an opportunity to catch up efficiently, their hybrid or in-office colleagues see them as an additional constraint.
This divergence illustrates the urgent need to fundamentally rethink employees’ relationship with work.
Faced with this situation, Microsoft is sketching out a way forward by outlining what it calls “Frontier Firms,” pioneering companies that are reinventing how they operate by using artificial intelligence.
Their approach is based on three pillars. First, applying the 80/20 rule by delegating routine activities to AI to free up time for impact-generating tasks.
Second, abandoning the traditional organisational chart in favour of an agile organisation where teams are formed around specific objectives.
Finally, developing the role of “agent bosses” who orchestrate mixed teams of humans and AI agents.
The challenge goes beyond simple technological optimisation. In a context where a third of employees feel it is impossible to keep up with the current pace, fundamentally rethinking the organisation of work becomes an existential necessity.
The question is no longer whether work will change, but whether companies will be able to adapt before their teams burn out in this frantic race toward an illusion of productivity.
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