Too Many Meetings, Not Enough Time to Work

For many employees, the workday can feel like a constant cycle of video calls, check-ins and calendar invitations with little uninterrupted time left to complete meaningful work.

Data from the Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report highlights the scale of the challenge. The report shows that meetings are heavily concentrated during the middle of the day, overlapping with one of the periods when many people naturally experience a performance spike. The result is predictable, employees are left trying to complete focused, high-value work early in the morning, late in the day, or outside standard working hours.

This is not simply a productivity issue. It is an HR, employee wellbeing and psychosocial safety issue.

The hidden cost of a meeting heavy culture

Meetings have an important role in building alignment, resolving problems and maintaining connection particularly in hybrid workplaces. But when every discussion becomes a meeting, employees lose the time and mental space needed for concentration, decision-making and deep work.

A diary filled with back to back meetings can contribute to:

• Increased stress and cognitive fatigue
• Longer working hours as employees “catch up” after meetings
• Reduced engagement and job satisfaction
• Poorer quality work and slower decision-making
• Frustration, burnout and employee turnover
• Unequal impacts on employees with caring responsibilities or less schedule flexibility

For managers, excessive meetings can also become a sign that accountability, processes or communication channels need attention. If people need a meeting to obtain every update, approval or decision, the organisation may have a workflow problem not a collaboration problem.

Make focus time part of good people practice

HR teams can play an important role in helping leaders create more intentional ways of working. Rather than treating diary overload as an individual timemanagement issue, organisations should consider the systems, habits and expectations that create it.

Practical steps may include:

Set clear meeting principles. Encourage employees to ask whether a meeting is genuinely necessary, who truly needs to attend and what outcome is required before sending an invitation.

Protect focus time. Introduce organisation wide meeting free periods, particularly during core concentration hours. Teams may choose one or two blocks each week where meetings are avoided unless genuinely urgent.

Shorten default meeting times. A 25-minute or 50-minute meeting can create valuable breathing room between conversations, allowing employees to prepare, document actions or simply reset.

Improve agendas and accountability. Every meeting should have a clear purpose, agenda, facilitator and agreed next steps. If there is no decision, discussion or outcome required, an email or shared document may be more effective.

Model the behaviour from the top. Leaders set the tone. When senior employees protect focus time, decline unnecessary invitations and avoid sending late-night requests, it gives others permission to do the same.

A healthier, more productive workplace

Creating space for focused work does not mean reducing collaboration. It means making collaboration more purposeful and recognising that employees need time to think, create and deliver.

Reviewing meeting culture is a simple but meaningful way to support productivity, engagement and psychological wellbeing across your organisation.

Need help reviewing workload, psychosocial hazards or workplace practices?

Contact PerformHR for practical, commercially focused HR and employee relations advice tailored to your business on 1300 406 005 or email info@performhr.com.au.

Source: Microsoft Work Trend Index Special Report, “Meetings Hijack Prime Focus Time”, June 2025.