2023-12-16 13:31:21
By AR
Published 1 hour ago, Updated 54 minutes ago
55% of executives believe they spend “too much time in meetings”. Wavebreak Media LTD / WavebreakmediaMicro – stock.adobe.com
The survey conducted by the Slack platform among 10,000 workers around the world highlights that meeting overdose often prevents employees from concentrating.
Who has never sighed when discovering yet another meeting on their professional schedule? Many employees wonder about the relevance of these repeated work meetings… and they would not be wrong, according to this recent study published by the global collaborative communication platform Slack. According to the company, which conducted a investigation with 10,000 workers in six countries (United States, Australia, France, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany), the “acute reunionitis» would seriously harm productivity.
More than one in four office workers, or 27% of those surveyed, believe they spend “too much time in meetings“. The proportion rises to 55% for executives, who are even more concerned by “meetings» daily. According to the study, the maximum threshold of employee tolerance for meetings is two hours per day. Beyond that, employees believe “lose” their time. Especially since the interest of these cascade meetings appears highly questionable: despite “briefs» in abundance, one employee in five still feels like they don’t have enough time to communicate with their colleagues.
When meetings lead to “extra” hours
«People who report spending too much time in meetings are twice as likely to report not having enough time to concentrate», Underlines the study. Several hours of meetings per day – in person or remotely – can sometimes force employees to complete their tasks outside of working hours. The phenomenon is not rare, since two out of five employees admit to working hours “supp’” at least once a week.
However, not all workers share this feeling of weariness with regard to professional meetings. Some would even like to participate more, young people in particular. Often less integrated into these great daily masses, 10% of them regret a “time too short» passed in a meeting. “These are most often employees who do not exceed 30 years of age and who have less than one year of seniority in the company.», Indicates the study. However, this blacklisting would also be harmful to the productivity of the employees concerned, believes Slack. It would also contribute to reducing the “sense of belonging» of newcomers to the company.
Also read Réunionitis: the secrets so that your meetings are no longer useless
Avoid wasting time and money
This investigation is not the first to document the effects of repeated meetings on worker efficiency and well-being. Last year, the American academic Steven Rogelberg had already tackled the subjectby questioning more than 600 employees about their time spent in “meetings“. Its conclusions were dizzying: on average, the workers surveyed devoted more than 18 hours per week to it, and reluctantly in 30% of cases. A “waste» of time and money, the loss of which would reach $25,000 per year per employee, according to the researcher’s conclusions.
In France, working people spend an average of six hours per week in meetings, according to a survey conducted by OpinionWay for Slack at the end of 2022. This proportion has jumped since the health crisis, due to the increase in meetings held remotely.
To treat this “reunionite» latent, some companies have not hesitated to take a radical path, like the French unicorn Alan, which simply deleted meetings from its employees’ schedules. Less radical, the Canadian online commerce platform Shopify has established an internal tool allowing employees to calculate the cost of a meeting. She now urges her employees to think twice before issuing a Teams invitation…
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