If you’re considering an early dip from the office today, ideally it’s because you’ve got something important to do, and not because you’re planning a covert escape from the bathroom window so nobody sees you in a full-body Spider-Man costume.
In either case, recent data appears to suggest workplace hall-of-famers like “would ya look at the time” and “let’s call it a day” are broadly being declared earlier than usual.
Time to bounce
The share of meetings scheduled between 4pm and 6pm across Microsoft Teams dropped 7% YoY in recent months, according to The Wall Street Journal. Elsewhere…
- On Yelp, 10% of restaurant diners are now seated between 2pm and 5pm, up from 5% in 2019.
- Uber trips to restaurants between 4pm and 5pm are up 10% from 2019, and down 9% after 8pm.
- Stanford researchers found golf courses to be 143% busier on weekdays in 2022 versus 2019.
Notably, signing off earlier doesn’t mean you’re not signing back on later; Microsoft Teams users now send 42% more after-hours chats compared to a year and a half ago.
Leading the charge: 44% of senior-level office workers and 50% of mid-level workers who now prefer to work from home, according to McKinsey, versus 6% of junior workers.
- These employees all said they’re willing to swap 20%+ of their compensation to work at home as they wish.
Time is money: To make the most of working hours, Shopify recently deleted 322k hours-worth of meetings, and now displays a meeting’s estimated financial cost on the calendar.
