Why half your work meetings are unnecessary, unwanted and a major drain on productivity
How many times have you thought: Great, another time suck of a meeting that could’ve been handled by an email?
If your employees seem overextended and burned out, it could be that they’re spending hundreds of hours each year in meetings that accomplish nothing.
A survey of more than 1,000 people working across various industries by Software Finder found that one in two believes nearly half their meetings are a complete waste of time. For HR departments tasked with boosting employee engagement and organizational efficiency, it amounts to a real productivity crisis, one with a hefty price tag. The average worker loses $6,280 annually to unnecessary meetings. For tech employees, the problem is even more pronounced, as they waste an average of 169 hours per year, at a cost of nearly $10,000 per person.
Meanwhile, 72% of workers overall report “meeting fatigue,” with Gen Z feeling it most — exhaustion that doesn’t just impact individual performance but erodes engagement, increases burnout and impacts retention. The generational dimension deserves special attention. Gen Z’s heightened meeting fatigue signals a potential mismatch between workplace norms and the expectations of younger employees who value asynchronous communication and outcome-focused collaboration over the way things have traditionally been done.
Meeting overload has become a systemic workplace issue, and HR, say experts, is uniquely positioned to address it. Unlike other productivity challenges that vary by role or department, excessive meetings affect nearly everyone and tend to stem from organizational culture versus individual behavior.
Kacy Fleming, a workplace strategist and organizational psychologist, created and ran a global initiative when she was head of global well-being at Takeda Pharmaceuticals called “Making Meetings Matter,” which was designed to improve the company’s meeting culture. With employee engagement in decline and more than half the workforce believing much of their time in meetings is wasted, “it’s past time to end toxic meeting culture,” said Fleming.
Fleming recommends these best practices for management:
“No agenda, no attenda.” Agendas help keep meetings on track and on time. Without them, meetings can be a pointless affair.
Be discerning. Most tasks do not require meetings. Before scheduling one, ask yourself if the task could be handled asynchronously with an email, Google doc or quick phone call.
Define desired outcomes. What you aim to accomplish in the meeting should be stated upfront in the meeting invite. If there isn’t a clear outcome, there’s no need to meet.
Consider the value. Not every meeting is a learning opportunity. Assign roles and responsibilities, keeping everyone involved, including Gen Z team members, from meeting fatigue.
Make it shorter. Reduce the time of meetings to 25 and 50 minutes (from a half-hour and hour). Be sure to start and stop on time. Then allow for 5-10 minutes between scheduled meetings to give employees time to recharge in between.
Meeting culture wasn’t created overnight and won’t disappear anytime soon. But with half of meetings delivering questionable value and costing thousands of dollars per worker every year, rethinking it could be a solution to a tuned-out, burned-out workforce.