“I’m in a meeting” is a phrase often heard in certain professions. After half an hour, if you claim that person again for something, the thing continues with a “I am still gathered”. And another half hour later, some (quite a few) will answer “uffff, this never ends”.
Conclusion: we spend our lives together, in the office or from home, that does not matter, but reunited at the end of the day. That’s where the dead hours go away and, beware, many of them will be necessary, but others … It is not at all clear.
What do the studies say about work meetings?
According to a survey conducted this year by the Adecco Group, in which more than 320 Spanish companies have participated, the companies confirm “a generalized and notable increase in communications within organizations, which also impacts on an apparently lower perception of productivity. Thus, 88% of the companies surveyed say they have increased the number of internal meetings, perceiving them as less profitable“. In other words, maybe there is a lot of blabla and little efficiency.
But how much commotion? Is it so serious that the meetings are many? Affirmative. According to another study conducted with 76 companies, published by the Harvard Business Review, Seven out of 10 employees improve their productivity when their companies reduce their meetings by 40%.
And the latest data: the company specialized in workspaces Comet Meetings has surveyed 3,000 employees from Belgium, Spain and France, and these are their conclusions:
Real cases
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Three women explain to Yo Dona what their work meetings are like. They have management positions, manage teams and confess to dedicating at least half of their day to them. This is what they say:
P.M.: “I spend 50% of the time together. Many meetings are dispensable and I do not find them practical. Too many people have their say and few topics are closed. The more people are summoned, the more risk there is that they will not be productive because there are always people who tend to debate. Team meetings are daily and we try not to exceed 30 minutes, but most of the time we don’t succeed.”
S.C.: “Meetings take up 40 or 50% of my time. I think the Virtual are more effective, because in the face-to-face there is more predisposition to comment on other topics and to enter into personal assessments. When I convene them, I bring a presentation prepared with the contents of the meeting, although at the end there is always a space for comments and proposals. I think it is negative that the call is massive: we should invite the right people because, in fact, sometimes You only attend by courtesy And it’s a waste of time and productivity.”
M.A.: “I invest very little in meetings lately, 30%, but there are weeks that go up to 60%. And they are usually short and productive, always less than 45 minutes. When I summon, I prepare the points to be treated and they are usually half an hour at most, so that if you have to dedicate more, we all have in mind that it is ‘discount time’ and Let’s cut to the chase“.
How to improve work meetings
Comet Meetings recommends Convene only essential people and do it in a comfortable place, if possible with natural and pleasant light. And of course, you have to make sure that everything is ready: that the projector works, that there is coffee … and the fundamental, that the meeting is well structured and directed.
Agustín Peralt, expert in personal productivity and author of the book ‘Lidérate’, knows a lot about work meetings and improving their effectiveness. We schedule the meeting/interview for 9 de the morning and, although this editor has made the mistake of not setting an end time, she feels the clock as a healthy sword of Damocles. See.
“If we add other communication formulas, such as e-mail, Whatsapp and internal tools, we have that many employees can Occupy 95% of your time, instead of working on what is important individually. It’s hard to get out of that hamster wheel,” he explains.
Peralt adds that the striking thing is to have normalized it and points out as responsible the organizations and also the employees themselves. “We have to say no more times to meetings we don’t need. At women They especially have a hard time being assertive,” she says.
Scratch 10 minutes
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- One of Peralt’s ‘recipes’ is to try scratch about 10 minutes to each meeting. Precisely, these days, a post on LinkedIn signed by Iago González Pazos, responsible for Change Management Department in Navantia, explained how he had got down to work with this leathery issue, with which he intends Gain an hour a day. “For a few weeks now, I have decided to reduce my meetings by 15 minutes. most common, that is, I convert into 45-minute meetings those that normally had 60 and for quick follow-up meetings (which I normally dedicated 30) I now dedicate 15, “he says in this social network. Its balance sheet, he continues, is “Absolutely top.”
- Also train workers to prepare it well, because he says: “The greatest waste of a company in the human aspect are the meetings, because in them many people lose time at the same time”. So much so that, he points out, in some large US companies a program has been introduced that calculates, with the salary of each participant, how much each meeting costs the company. “So it looks better that a 60-minute can cost a company $10,000,” he says.
- Delimit the time and clarify objectives. This way we avoid meetings in which the main topic is diverted, endless discussions and even “ego struggles”. For that, explains the expert, having a good moderator is essential. Peralt says 50% of success is in “doing your homework well” and preparing for meetings.
- Make clear the next steps and Who is responsible to carry them out.
We finished the conversation at 9:24 with a pass, according to Agustín Peralt.