Circle Back Next Week: The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers' Unstructured Time and Attention Negotiation

TL;DR

This work investigates how organization-wide meeting-free weeks impact distributed knowledge workers' ability to maintain focus and how attention is negotiated without scheduled meetings. It employs two qualitative studies in a large distributed software company, analyzing workers' use of unstructured time and their compensating mechanisms for attention. The authors identify three orientations—Focus, Collaborative, and Time-Bound—and develop an attention negotiation framework that reveals tensions between attention-getting and attention-delegation strategies. The study argues for a holistic sociotechnical design approach that combines organizational norms with tool-level features to support attention negotiation and reduce unnecessary meetings, with implications for practice and future research.

Abstract

While distributed workers rely on scheduled meetings for coordination and collaboration, these meetings can also challenge their ability to focus. Protecting worker focus has been addressed from a technical perspective, but companies are now attempting organizational interventions, such as meeting-free weeks. Recognizing distributed collaboration as a sociotechnical challenge, we first present an interview study with distributed workers participating in meeting-free weeks at an enterprise software company. We identify three orientations workers exhibit during these weeks: Focus, Collaborative, and Time-Bound, each with varying levels and use of unstructured time. These different orientations result in challenges in attention negotiation, which may be suited for technical interventions. This motivated a follow-up study investigating attention negotiation and the compensating mechanisms workers developed during meeting-free weeks. Our framework identified tensions between the attention-getting and attention-delegation strategies. We extend past work to show how workers adapt their virtual collaboration mechanisms in response to organizational interventions

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: Attention negotiation framework. Each person in attention negotiation has an attention state and attention strategies, which others may or may not be aware of. Person A's attention-getting strategies are comprised of the methods they use, the additions they include in these methods, and their escalation pathways. Their choice of these elements depends on their personal preferences, the way they use their tools, knowledge of the other person, and the time they have available. Person B has attention-delegation strategies comprised of ways of protecting and triaging their attention and constraints on their attention. Their choice of strategy also depends on their preferences, the tools they use, their knowledge of Person A, and the volume of information they are experiencing. If the strategy used to get one's attention does not align with their attention-delegation strategy, tensions arise.