One thing that did not change even after Covid-19 in the workplace is the massive number of meetings employees must attend weekly: more than 85% of their time is spent in meetings. And the worst part is half of them are unproductive. Some companies though are taking a stance to change this and promoting meeting-free days.
Why are meetings unproductive?
- Employees complain that meetings could be better organized, derailed by complex questions, dominated by a few employees, or topics addressed that are not important to them.
- More and more employees working in hybrid and remote mode are getting stressed out during meetings due to issues like psychological safety, fear of speaking in public and interacting with a hippo (a leader or high potential).
- Meetings are distractors and drive time fragmentation. Employees need to stop what they are doing and shift their focus to a meeting. The “switching time”, which is the time required to concentrate on a task after an interruption, reduces employee productivity and interrupts flow. It takes at least 15 minutes to become productive again after a distraction.
- Some employees are forced to travel or go to the office, change their schedules or shift priorities.
As a result, many organizations are adopting meeting-free days. the best results were achieved at companies with three meeting-free days per week.
Research published by Harvard Business Review surveyed 76 companies, with more than 1,000 employees each and operations in more than 50 countries that had introduced from one to five no-meeting days per week (prohibiting even one-on-one meetings) during the past 12 months.
Regardless of the number of meeting-free days instituted, employees reported improved autonomy and cooperation and decreased stress and micromanagement.
The sweet spot seems to be in decreasing meetings by 60%, having 3 meeting-free days a week. When meetings were reduced, productivity was higher because employees felt more empowered and autonomous, they had their own to-do lists and held themselves accountable, also increasing satisfaction. Employees also decreased the stress of meeting with multiple people and improved collaboration by finding better ways of connecting one-on-one. On the other hand, having too few meetings reduced cooperation and engagement. Read the following article to learn more about how to reduce meeting time.
