Working late? You’re not the only one, research shows

Employees have shifted away from the traditional 9-to-5 job as they attend meetings and check their email inboxes after hours

New research shows employees are working late into the evening hours as they catch up on meetings and emails.

Microsoft has released its 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report, and the results paint a startling picture of a work culture that has shifted away from the traditional 9-to-5 job.

The triple peak day, a trend among remote workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, has become the norm for many, according to Microsoft, despite many workers returning to in-office work.

Microsoft researchers began using the term to describe a shift in productivity during the pandemic. Usually, there are two productivity peaks in a workday, before and after lunch, but now there is a third peak in the evening hours.

New research shows employees are working late into the evening hours as they catch up on meetings and emails (AFP via Getty Images)

The new data collected by Microsoft showed meetings after 8 p.m. are up 16 percent from last year. This increase is primarily due to “global and flexible teams,” Microsoft said in a release detailing this data.

Ravi Desai of California manages a global customer success team for a software company. He told The Wall Street Journal, “There is a tendency to be generally connected all the time.”

Additionally, the average worker sends or receives more than 50 messages outside of normal business hours. By 10 p.m., 29 percent of workers go back to check their inboxes.

And it’s not just employees’ evenings that are being eaten away. They are also losing time on their off days.

Almost 20 percent of employees working on the weekend are checking their inboxes before noon on Saturday and Sunday, Microsoft researchers found. After 6 p.m. on Sundays, more than 5 percent of workers check their emails again.

“The Sunday scaries are real and measurable,” Microsoft said.

Microsoft’s study also found the average worker receives 117 emails daily and 153 Teams messages per workday.

Dan Quitério’s workload increased at his former social media-marketing job in New York after his department leader left the company and wasn’t replaced. He told the Journal, “There were definitely situations where I, just as a single human being, couldn’t do all the things.”