Key Findings

  • According to the Hubstaff 2026 Global Benchmark Report, employees average only 2 to 3 hours of deep focus per day, meaning continuous work time uninterrupted by meetings, messages, or tool switching.
  • Teams that are fully in-office or fully remote reported the most uninterrupted work time: in-office teams spent 45% of their work hours in deep focus, while remote teams spent 41%. In contrast, hybrid teams had the lowest percentage of focused time at just 31%. Across all teams, managers and team leaders averaged only 27% of their work hours in a focused state.
  • Hubstaff noted in a press release that increased meeting volume and poor scheduling are major barriers to focus time. Report data shows that the number of meetings per person per year has doubled compared to two years ago, while the total meeting volume for a typical organization has grown to nearly six times as much.

Deep Dive

The Hubstaff report tracked work hours from over 140,000 global employees across 17,000 organizations and found that about 25% of tracked meeting time occurred during "peak deep work hours," with nearly one-third of meetings held outside standard working hours.

"Our data proves that teams are not failing at productivity but are operating within work systems that constantly interrupt focus," said Hubstaff CEO Jared Brown in the press release. "If leaders want better performance and real returns on AI investments, they must treat focus time as a core operational principle, not just an individual responsibility."

The report shows that employees struggle to manage numerous tools in the workplace. Hubstaff found that employees use an average of 18 applications per day, while those in sales/marketing, customer success, and administrative/HR roles use more than 20 applications per day on average.

Additionally, although AI adoption rates are rising, employees are not spending more time using these tools. The report shows that AI applications accounted for about 3% of total tracked work time, down from about 4% year over year. However, AI usage varies by team type: in 2025, hybrid teams used AI about 11% of their daily time, up from about 5% the previous year; remote and office teams used AI about 1% to 2% of their daily time.

Last year, researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Vanderbilt University, and the Harvard Kennedy School reported that generative AI has become an integral part of workflows for U.S. workers aged 18 to 64. The collected data indicates that for every hour workers use generative AI, their productivity increases by an average of 33%.

However, these productivity gains may be significantly lost to rework. A recent Workday report found that some employees lose up to 1.5 weeks of work time per year correcting AI outputs.