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Workplace complaints about seemingly incessant meetings are as common as honking horns during traffic jams, or passenger protests over cancelled flights. But new survey data gives more weight to peoples’ grousing about those frequent business huddles, quantifying how many are considered an utter waste of time — and the thousands of dollars in productivity losses they’re costing employers. The cautionary contained in those statistics was the big takeaway from a new study of 1,000 U.S. employees by tech product advisory platform Software Finder. It found that the frequency of either in-person or online work meetings led 72 percent of respondents to complain of chronic fatigue or burnout in dealing with them. Perhaps even more troubling for business owners, participants said nearly half, or 46 percent of all staff, customer, or even one-to-one meetings with managers were “unnecessary or unproductive” — that is, wasted time. The sheer number of today’s workplace meetings increases the likelihood of participants falling prey to burnout. The survey found the average respondent has to attend five weekly meetings that together eat up six hours of their work week. But 16 percent of participants reported regularly having to attend 10 or more meetings each week, and 19 percent saying those lasted a total of 10 hours or more. As a result, Software Finder’s survey found U.S. “employees estimated wasting 146 hours annually in meetings that don’t add value.” The company’s report on the results said that wasted time translated into productivity losses of around $6,280 each year per worker involved. Featured Video An Inc.com Featured Presentation Those losses rose to $9,825 for tech businesses and $8,014 for financial companies, whose higher salaries make every hour employees spent idling in unnecessary gatherings more costly. That waste similarly grew with the increasing size of companies involved, and the rank of employees participating in meetings. So what can employers do to cut down on time and money lost on unproductive meetings, yet still get staff together to more effectively pursue company objectives? A first move could be to decrease or discourage the specific kinds of meetings that survey respondents called the biggest time wasters. Those were led by status updates, all-hands or town halls, brainstorming, project kickoffs, and one-to-one consulting between workers and their manager. Another remedial effort would be to encourage people leading meetings to schedule them during times the survey found to be the least disruptive. Nearly a third of respondents said the best period for those were Monday mornings, with 40 percent saying huddles during that slot were also the most productive. Perhaps not surprisingly, participants called Fridays — especially in the afternoon — the most disruptive and least effective time to gather teams together. Another tip for employers is to prioritize in-person meetings over online alternatives — which 49 percent of participants called more draining than face-to-face gatherings. Finally, in an effort to minimize wasted time, business owners and managers holding meetings should read the room and gauge how much people are participating — or more frequently, not. According to the Software Finder survey, fully 85 percent of respondents said they’ve remained silent during meetings they regarded as wastes of time. The biggest reasons cited by employees who stay mum were impressions the gathering was entirely performative in the first place; multitasking on more productive work projects; and feeling their input wouldn’t be valued anyway. In other words, the Software Finder survey report said, business owners can do themselves and their employees a favor — and avoid frittering thousands of productivity dollars away — by staying attentive to what kind of meetings workers consider worth holding, and the times when those work best. “Meeting fatigue is eating up time, money, and energy,” the report’s conclusion warned. “Poorly planned meetings lead to wasted hours and disengaged teams, and the costs add up fast. But it doesn’t have to be the norm. Listening to what employees need and rethinking how meetings happen can turn things around. Cutting even one off the calendar can mean less burnout and more focus.”
