When cloud-based software company Workday started bringing employees back to the office a few days a week last year, the company noticed the collaboration that had been missing in the remote world quickly came back to life. Colleagues stopped each other in the hallway to chat and catch up, and things that would have been emails before turned into meetings.
The organization saw a 17% increase in connections across teams according to their own internal metrics, Workday vice president of people analytics Phil Willburn tells Fortune. But activity for activity’s sake isn’t always good, and too much can have a downside. Workday, which makes software for human resources and finance departments, also saw a 24% increase in the amount of time people were spending in meetings. Employees didn’t have enough time to get their work done, projects piled up, and the days got longer, which led to workers feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
