Stuck in a meeting? The one thing about hybrid work and working from home that is driving some employees crazy
Only half of workers believe employers are doing enough to make hybrid working or working from home seamless, research shared by Slack reveals.
Even though 87 per cent of IT managers said they were investing to reduce the friction involved in employees working from home (wf) and in the office, large numbers of workers report problems.
Slack’s research found 60 per cent of employees believed unnecessary meetings were wasting their time, with 36 per cent saying the situation had worsened in the past twelve months.
The average employee spends seven hours and 42 minutes a week either scheduling or sitting through meetings and just under nine hours on focussed or “deep” work.
Slack said 24 per cent of employees found that fewer spontaneous conversations were taking place compared to before the pandemic and 33 per cent worried that hybrid working makes it hard to share knowledge.
The research comes after John Neal, Lloyd’s of London Chief Executive, told Morning Wire last month that office work was vital “to develop talent”.
“If you really want to be innovative… you need to be collected together”, he said
Elon Musk banned working from home in his first ever email to Twitter employees after buying the company.
Jane Sparrow, author and founder of consultancy The Culture Builders, told Morning Wire that some of her clients had experienced a rise in “unhealthy” workplace tensions following the introduction of hybrid working.
“We sometimes have to help people understand that it doesn’t need to be tense, you just haven’t spent enough time getting to know one another to understand how things work”, she said.
HR author and lecturer Gemma Dale said that though unnecessary meetings were often a feature of office life “hybrid has exacerbated some problems” because back to back meetings on screen are “not good for focus, stress levels or general wellbeing”.
“What organisations need to do is make coming into the office meaningful, engaging and interesting. Coming into the office to spend all day on Teams or Zoom doesn’t cut it”, she said.
Slack surveyed 350 senior IT managers and 1,650 professionals for its research.