I just wanted to report back that we no longer have to restart the "workstation" service in order for workstations to connect to the NAS any longer. It was a great workaround and may prove to have underlying benefits until MSFT patches the issue permanently
but I am convinced that changing the minimum and maximum SMB protocol values on the NAS settings was the culprit for us.
Noting that users are likely using various OS and versions, this may or may not fix everything for them.
Thanks for all the kudos for the workaround. I hope everyone can assume maximum productivity until the fix arises.