Endless meetings are a productivity nightmare
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.