After-hours conferences have gone from uncommon to common occurrences, and whereas some are hoping AI can assist reverse the pattern, specialists warn breaking the behavior will take greater than tech.
In a latest survey performed by AI-powered workspace supplier Miro, 33% of US-based information staff stated they continuously attended after-hours conferences in 2025, up from 23% in 2024.
“Six in 10 folks attend conferences after hours at the least as soon as a month, and that has every kind of unfavourable downstream results,” says Dom Katz, Miro’s methods of working lead. “The info suggests increasingly more folks persistently have conferences after their ordinary workday ends, and it’s getting worse; not simply within the U.S. or Europe, however throughout the board.”
Katz explains that the explosion in after-hours conferences is probably going an extension of the rise in conferences extra broadly. In accordance with a 2025 examine by Miro, for every hour a employee spends on “momentum work”—like brainstorming, collaborative workshops and interactive cross useful initiatives—they spend three more on maintenance tasks, like emails, paperwork and conferences. “It creates stress, it’s a productivity drain, and saps them off their creativity,” Katz says.
Katz explains that scheduling and video conferencing know-how has made it simpler than ever to name a gathering. However he additionally warns that with out correct pointers, staff are prone to get caught in a whole lot of pointless conferences, throughout and past customary working hours.
“Unhealthy assembly hygiene is unquestionably a contributor,” he says. “You get into the assembly, there’s no agenda, they run over continually, there’s no selections made, so that you get one other assembly round it; it’s extremely ineffective.”
Why We’re Assembly Extra at Night time
The Miro knowledge is according to Microsoft’s 2025 Work Development Index, which discovered that meetings after 8 p.m. increased 16% from the earlier yr. In accordance with that examine, which was based mostly on anonymized Microsoft Groups consumer knowledge, the majority of the rise was attributed to international and versatile groups.
“In our sentiment knowledge, which fits out to 31,000 folks, 80% of workers stated they didn’t really feel like that they had sufficient time and power to do their job, so we all know persons are feeling burnt out,” says Alexia Cambon, director, workplace of utilized analysis at Microsoft. “The dearth of agency boundaries between private life {and professional} life might be a contributor.”
Cambon hypothesizes that conferences started creeping into non-working hours through the pandemic and the transition to distant work. That interval, she explains, launched many to digital conferences instruments—which made it doable to name a gathering with a couple of clicks—whereas making it tougher to change off on the finish of the day.
The added flexibility might have additionally allowed some to shift their work schedules in ways in which higher suited their private wants, like laying aside conferences till after their youngsters have been in mattress.
One other potential issue, suggests Cambon, is the more and more international nature of labor. In accordance with the Microsoft examine, practically a 3rd of conferences span a number of time zones, a 35% improve from 2021, growing the probability that some individuals are becoming a member of after-hours of their time zone.
“After which I feel simply the enterprise pressures are increased, and we noticed that within the survey knowledge,” she says. “Particularly, over half of enterprise leaders advised us they want extra productiveness from their workers, so we’re seeing this very fast tempo.”
Why AI Can’t Repair a Damaged Assembly Tradition
New AI instruments might cut back late-night gatherings by permitting staff to ship AI be aware takers of their place, or allow extra asynchronous alternate options to real-time occasions. On the identical time, Cambon warns that the know-how alone gained’t produce higher assembly hygiene.
“Your assembly tradition is your assembly tradition, and except you utilize AI very deliberately, nothing is admittedly going to vary,” she warns. “It’s important to work out the way to make your assembly tradition higher.”
On the identical time, the know-how can also be placing extra stress on companies to adapt, which regularly ends in extra conferences, not much less.
“We’re seeing work shift in new methods, pushed by AI, and from my perspective this has been an extremely intensive time for staff and specifically staff in AI-native organizations,” says Dr. Rebecca Hinds, the pinnacle of the AI Work Institute for enterprise AI platform Glean and creator of Your Greatest Assembly Ever. “There’s a stress that I’ve by no means seen earlier than, and we’re seeing increasingly more proof that that’s contributing to after-hours work.”
Within the wake of the pandemic, some organizations used new distant collaboration instruments to allow higher flexibility, whereas others used them to encroach on work-life boundaries, and Dr. Hinds warns that AI isn’t any completely different.
“The extra we’ve got entry to know-how, the better it’s to schedule and attend a gathering, the extra we’re going to do this in an setting the place we don’t have a wholesome, intentional assembly tradition,” she says. “All of that is decreasing the bar by way of what it takes to schedule a gathering.”
Utilizing know-how to free your evenings
On the identical time, Dr. Hinds says there are methods to make use of know-how to advertise work-life boundaries and free our evenings from work tasks.
For instance, some instruments permit staff to restrict their assembly availability to working hours. Others robotically warn organizers after they’re scheduling a gathering after-hours for individuals in different time-zones. Some will even flag when a gathering is prone to be ineffective, corresponding to when there are too many individuals, or a majority of invites haven’t acquired a response.
Different instruments, like AI note-takers, video messaging apps and digital collaboration instruments are making it simpler for staff to collaborate asynchronously, lowering their reliance on real-time conversations.
“Asynchronous is the secret by way of reducing our time spent in dysfunctional conferences,” Dr. Hinds says. “[As is] having clear norms round what’s the function of every software, what’s the function of a gathering, and the way ought to we be utilizing conferences? That holds true for any time of day.”
