Sound familiar?
According to a recent survey on Salary.com, meetings are the number one office time waster. Nearly four hours a week are spent in meetings with more than half the time wasted. What's the result of this? Is company vision any clearer? Are staff more engaged? Or have you simply wasted precious time? The whole point of meetings is for people to debate and discuss issues, clarify who does what, and then make decisions. Yet, everyone seems to agree this isn't happening.
While the need to collaborate isn't going to disappear anytime soon, there has been a drastic shift in how and where this collaboration occurs.
With an estimated 20 million people working from home at least one day a week, more and more meetings are being held through teleconferencing tools like Skype. There is also an increasing reliance on workplace collaboration tools, such as intranet replacing solutions. These are eliminating the need for face to face meetings by providing a platform where staff can choose topics to discuss while zoning in on other employee's strengths, teams, and ongoing projects.
But it isn’t just the employees that are applauding a meeting-less shift. CEOs are also noticing a clear impact on the bottom line. Meeting costs not only eat up the hourly price of an employee but also results in hefty travel costs for out of town staff.
As the workforce becomes more globalized collaboration tools are only going to increase. As someone who hates meetings, I couldn't be more excited. Although I have to wonder, with less meetings how are local donut shops going to remain in business?