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The Future of Work Issue

IS THE “FUTURE OF WORK” HAPPENING IN YOUR OFFICE? JUST LOOK AROUND.

May 18, 2023

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The Future of Work Issue


TOO MANY MEETINGS? THERE’S A BOLD SOLUTION.

The pile-up of meetings at a company can slow progress. Here’s how to clear the
lane so your teams can drive more meaningful results.

Words by David Silverberg

Illustration by Jordan Bogash

Steven Rogelberg has been busy, and that’s putting it kindly. 

Rogelberg is a professor of psychology and management at the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte and author of The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You
Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance.

Of late, the lauded speaker has been consulting with dozens of enterprise-sized
firms about a subject that might be touchy for many: Meetings. More
specifically, he’s been talking with leaders about how they can hold meetings
that have more impact. 

Steven Rogelberg

Meetings have been the subject of increased scrutiny in the last several years.
People across the org chart have endured burnout-inducing conditions—many
inflamed by a schedule jammed bumper-to-bumper with meetings. It’s time for a
change.

“There’s been a tremendous appetite to maximize the effectiveness of meetings,”
Rogelberg tells The Workback. “It has certainly come to a head because the
pandemic elevated the topic.”

But also: “Meetings are a principal form of collaboration.”

The news cycle wholly supports Rogerlberg’s assessment: Some enterprises are
leaning hard in a direction that would have been shocking five years ago. Look
at the slew of companies announcing a no-meeting day where employees are asked
not to conduct meetings within 24 hours. (For its part, Asana, which publishes
The Workback, has practiced “no-meeting Wednesdays” for more than a decade. This
internal doc shared by Asana co-founder Dustin Moskotivz in January 2013 on the
public forum Quora explores the idea in greater detail.)



In early January, Shopify, the Canadian multinational e-commerce company,
informed employees it was taking a significant step. Shopify, an Asana customer,
would clear calendars of all recurring meetings of three-plus people and
continue its commitment to meeting-free Wednesdays.

Kaz Nejatian

Kaz Nejatian, VP Product & Chief Operating Officer, emailed all employees who
now work remotely on January 3 to explain the rationale behind the decision.

“No one joined Shopify to sit in meetings. Not one person has ever thought, ‘You
know what will make a big impact on entrepreneurship? Day after day of
back-to-back meetings.’”

Stephanie Ross, Communications Lead at Shopify, tells The Workback that when
that email hit inboxes, soon after, the company cleared around 12,000 series and
events, many of which are recurring and all of which had multiple attendees. If
netted out across the year, that totals about 322,000 hours. 

Nejatian noted in his memo that “uninterrupted time is the most precious
resource of a craftsperson. We are giving our people a ‘no judgment zone’ to
subtract, reject meetings, and focus on what is most valuable.”



> COMPANIES PAY AN AVERAGE OF $80,000 PER PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYEE TO ATTEND
> MEETINGS ANNUALLY, AND $25,000 (31%) IS ALLOTTED TO ATTEND MEETINGS DEEMED
> UNNECESSARY.

Otter.ai study

Nonessential meetings are saddled with a significant financial toll for
employers, Rogelberg found in a study he conducted with the automated
transcription service Otter.ai. Companies pay an average of $80,000 per
professional employee to attend meetings annually, and $25,000 (31%) is allotted
to attend meetings deemed unnecessary, the 2022 report reveals. 

👉 See also: Eliminate unnecessary meetings and get back your time

Even if managers scale back on holding meetings, there’s the question of how to
lead the ones they plan effectively. In Rogerlberg’s experience as a consultant,
he’s noticed how few leaders are trained to lead meetings expertly. “There’s no
accountability in place for running meetings,” he says. “With no feedback
protocols, such as employee engagement surveys, how can anyone know if they are
bad at leading meetings?”

As tempting as it may be for employees to voice their concerns about pointless
meetings and even click “No” on calendar invitations, many don’t make that move.
In the Rogelberg-Otter.ai survey, almost half of the employees (47%) said they
hesitate to decline an invitation because they don’t want to “upset or offend”
the organizer.


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Benjamin Laker

Benjamin Laker, the Director of Impact and Global Engagement at Henley Business
School at the University of Reading, has also studied how meetings impact
employees. Laker has noticed an intriguing nuance: People are unhappy with a
meeting’s structure or planning.

“Meetings can lack direction, struggle to stay on track, and be a waste of time
due to the number of distractions that can arise from having multiple people in
one room at once,” Laker tells The Workback.

More often than not, he adds, managers can find themselves clogging meetings
with superfluous attendees. 

“A manager may invite all their employees to a meeting instead of only those who
will be most affected by the topic at hand,” Laker says. “This can lead to
wasted time and energy from people who don’t need to be in the meeting and who
could be focusing on other tasks.”



Laker says that when managers include people in a meeting with no authority over
any decisions or outcomes, the meeting could result in poor business results and
friction within the collaborative process.

Employees may need more motivation during meetings, even if they can attend them
in sweatpants via video conferencing technology, Laker notes:

“It can still be challenging for people to stay engaged during virtual meetings
because of their lack of physical interaction,” Laker says. “It’s important for
companies to continue looking for ways to make their online meetings as
effective and productive as possible.”

Vijay Pereira

What managers now have at their fingertips should inspire them to rethink how to
meet with their employees, says Vijay Pereira, Head of Department (People &
Organisations) at NEOMA Business School in France. “Consider using a chat
messaging service to run your regular check-ins.”

In his research on meeting culture, Pereira often concludes with messaging
intended for managers to recalibrate their perspective on meetings. 

“We believe employees and managers should have between one to five no-meeting
days [per week] to be more efficient, productive and match work-life balance,”
Pereira tells The Workback.

Laker is also a proponent of no-meeting days: “They provide an opportunity to
encourage better meeting practices and ensure that only the most necessary
meetings occur.”

Laker’s 2022 on the topic, “The surprising impact of meeting-free days,” yielded
impressive results, especially for collaboration-driven businesses. Among the
findings: “When one no-meeting day per week was introduced, autonomy,
communication, engagement, and satisfaction all improved, resulting in decreased
micromanagement and stress, which caused productivity to rise.”

The idea of a meeting is a mechanism that invites each employee to share their
varied knowledge, skill set, and perspective in a collaborative, real-time
environment. Rogelberg puts it this way: “Think of those positives and then
consider how companies want to eliminate those positives when really we should
be working at getting better at them.”



This article includes Asana customers, partners, or employees. The Workback’s
policy is to be fully transparent about the business relationships between our
sources and Asana, Inc. We have identified those instances within the article as
well.

See also:

 * Collaboration in the workplace: 11 ways to boost your team’s performance
 * What is remote collaboration: 4 ways to improve teamwork
 * Cross-functional work: The secret to a collaborative workplace



The Workback is published by Asana, a collaborative work management platform
that enables the world's teams to work together effortlessly.

 * ABOUT THE WORKBACK

 * Our Mission
 * Standards and Ethics
 * Contact Us
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