Meetings serve to distract workers from task in hand

REGULAR meetings ruin productivity because workers are constantly worried about running late, a study has found.

Staff anticipating a meeting mentally subtract up to a third of the time they have available.

Scientists found that having created an unnecessary buffer “in case something comes up”, people perform fewer tasks, or smaller tasks, than if their next appointment was not looming over them.

Researchers at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business asked participants how long they could spend reading an hour before an appointment for which they were fully prepared.

Respondents said they had 50 minutes available, and even said that subjectively it felt like they had only 40 minutes.

In a separate study, participants were told either that they had five minutes to kill before a forthcoming task, or were told simply they had five spare minutes to spare.

Those who were not reminded about the forthcoming task carried out 30 per cent more activities – such as sending texts or replying to emails – than those whose thoughts were on the next job.

Prof Selin Malkoc, the study’s co-author, said: “You don’t feel like you can get as much done when you have a task coming up soon. The time seems shorter. We feel that if we have a meeting in two hours, we shouldn’t work on any big projects. So we may spend time just answering emails or doing things that aren’t as productive.”

The study conducted by her team was published in the Journal of Consumer Research.