According to a recent study by Otter.ai and Dr. Steven Rogelberg, large corporations lose over $100 million annually as a result of pointless meetings. According to the report, unneeded meetings cost businesses with more than 100 workers more than $2 million annually; for businesses with more than 5,000 employees, the cost soars to more than $100 million.
The poll, which gathered responses from 632 people working in a variety of industries, discovered that employees spend an average of 17 hours per week attending meetings, taking up a total of 18 hours of their workweek. Only 12 of the meetings they attend, according to the respondents, are essential; the other five might have been skipped if they had been informed of the results in advance.
Although over half of respondents (47%) said they were hesitant to refuse an offer because they didn’t want to “upset or offend” the host, it indicates that missing meetings is a no-go for many respondents.
According to Rogelberg, the major causes of why employees feel forced to attend meetings, even ones they think are superfluous, are the absence of discussion surrounding meeting etiquette and “organizational conventions.” Overwork and multitasking follow, which diminish productivity and morale.
According to Rogelberg, “the expectations and conventions underlying meeting culture in so many firms are seriously broken.” “Employees that shouldn’t be in a meeting frequently sit there uninterested or multitask, which is distracting to others and can cause the meeting to fail. This not only affects the meeting’s quality, but it also wastes important employee time and productivity.”
