Large Scale Analysis of Multitasking Behavior During Remote Meetings

TL;DR

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of multitasking behavior during remote meetings, revealing how meeting characteristics influence multitasking and its effects on productivity and wellbeing, with implications for best practices and tool design.

Contribution

It offers the most extensive analysis to date of remote meeting multitasking, linking meeting features to multitasking patterns and outcomes, and providing practical guidelines and design insights.

Findings

Meeting size, length, and type significantly affect multitasking levels.

Multitasking can have both positive and negative impacts on productivity and wellbeing.

Guidelines and tool designs can support healthier multitasking during remote meetings.

Abstract

Virtual meetings are critical for remote work because of the need for synchronous collaboration in the absence of in-person interactions. In-meeting multitasking is closely linked to people's productivity and wellbeing. However, we currently have limited understanding of multitasking in remote meetings and its potential impact. In this paper, we present what we believe is the most comprehensive study of remote meeting multitasking behavior through an analysis of a large-scale telemetry dataset collected from February to May 2020 of U.S. Microsoft employees and a 715-person diary study. Our results demonstrate that intrinsic meeting characteristics such as size, length, time, and type, significantly correlate with the extent to which people multitask, and multitasking can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Our findings suggest important best-practice guidelines for remote meetings (e.g., avoid important meetings in the morning) and design implications for productivity tools (e.g., support positive remote multitasking).