Yahoo Finance Endless meetings are a productivity nightmare, workers say
Employers looking to boost workplace productivity might want to consider cutting down on the number of meetings they expect staff to attend or even eliminating them altogether on certain days.
Meetings are the biggest waste of time employees face, with such gatherings considered useless almost three-quarters of the time, according to a recent survey of 5,000 workers in the United States, Australia, India, Germany and France by software company Atlassian Corp.
Company leaders might think meetings help people collaborate, but employees say otherwise. Three-quarters say the gatherings don’t help them feel connected to co-workers and they fail to spur them to generate new ideas or make decisions. Meetings are not even that good at providing people with the critical information they need to do their jobs, and a majority of employees say they often leave not knowing the status of a project or if goals are being met.
Plus, all those endless meetings are wearing workers out. A day filled with calls leaves 76 per cent of workers feeling exhausted, the survey said. Work-life balance also takes a hit, with more than half saying they need to put in multiple days of overtime each week to finish tasks because they were forced to sit in a meeting. “Nobody is having fun here,” Atlassian said.
Separate research by workplace messaging company Slack Technologies Inc. backs up Atlassian’s findings. Late last year, workers told Slack that two hours of meetings a day was their absolute limit, with anything more sapping their energy and, ultimately, their ability to get work done. Workers who toiled away for extra hours to make up that lost time experienced even more issues, including lower productivity, higher stress and burnout.
Added together, too many workplace gatherings appear to be creating more problems than solutions. “They aren’t evil; they’re just poorly done,” Atlassian said of its findings. “The meeting culture at most organizations actually makes it harder for teams to reach their goals.” In the end, 80 per cent of workers say they would be much more productive if their company cut down on meetings.
The research linking excess meetings to poor productivity comes at a time when Canada’s overall productivity woes are making headlines. Last week, Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers called low productivity an “emergency” and outlined why there’s reason to worry. “An economy with low productivity can grow only so quickly before inflation sets in. But an economy with strong productivity can have faster growth, more jobs and higher wages with less risk of inflation,” she said in a March 26 speech.
Rogers said fixing Canada’s lagging productivity lies in increasing business investment. But on a smaller level, managers and employees also have a role to play. The Conference Board of Canada points out that asking workers to put in extra hours won’t fix lagging output, so companies must find ways to be more resourceful. “Improving productivity is not about working longer or harder; it’s about working smarter,” the Conference Board said. “It’s about finding more efficient and effective ways to produce goods and services so that more can be produced with the same amount of effort.”
Re-thinking meetings may be one way for companies to find such efficiencies. As an added bonus, eliminating time-wasting workplace gatherings will likely improve employees’ lives and overall engagement, while also boosting productivity and corporate balance sheets. Researchers in the United Kingdom and France found that banning meetings one day a week had a “profound” effect on employee well-being and output. “When one no-meeting day per week was introduced, autonomy, communication, engagement and satisfaction all improved, resulting in decreased micromanagement and stress, which caused productivity to rise,” they said in an MIT Sloan Management article detailing their findings.
Shopify Inc. is one Canadian company that’s taken steps to kill unnecessary meetings. In early 2023, the e-commerce company cancelled all recurring meetings with more than two people and banned meetings on Wednesdays. In July, Shopify upped the ante by introducing a meeting cost calculator. Using salary data, meeting length and attendance numbers, the application aims to discourage pointless gatherings by placing a price tag on them. For example, Shopify said the average 30-minute conference costs up to US$1,600, while inviting an executive inflates the price to as much as US$2,000.
Shopify chief operating officer Kaz Nejatian, who created the program, said the calculator was intended to serve as a wake-up call for employees. “No one at Shopify would expense a $500 dinner,” he told Bloomberg at the time. “But lots and lots of people spend way more than that in meetings without ever making a decision. The goal of this thing is to show you that time is money. If you have to spend it, you think about it.”
No one is advocating for all meetings to be eliminated. But companies can put steps in place to make them better, Atlassian said. For example, employees should ensure they create an agenda ahead of any gathering and include a list of goals, discussion topics and expected outcomes to keep meetings on track. Companies might also want to experiment with shortening meeting times and making 15-minute gatherings the default. “Meetings will always be a part of teamwork,” the report said. “But they don’t have to suck.”
• Email: vwells@postmedia.com
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