‘Useless’ meetings must go, say bosses

Tired of attending useless meetings? Your boss is probably sick of them too.

Executives spend an average of 25 hours a week in meetings, yet nearly half of those Zoom calls and project updates could disappear without any negative impact, according to a survey of more than 10,000 desk workers by research consortium Future Forum.

The top reason business leaders go to unproductive meetings is that they think it will be a good use of time. They also attend because they’re afraid to miss something important and to show their managers they’re working, it found.

For those lower down the corporate ladder, the most common reason for showing up is obvious: they don’t have a choice.

The findings come as many organisations try to assess which meetings really matter in an increasingly hybrid workplace.

Reluctantly going to noncritical meetings wastes about $100m (about R1.8bn) a year at big organisations, according to a separate survey, which also found workers decline only 14% of invites, even though they’d prefer to back out of 31%.

The share of virtual meetings that are one-on-one increased from 17% in 2020 to 42% last year, a study of 48-million meetings from collaboration analytics firm Vyopta found, a sign companies are trying to rein in participants at least, if not overall meetings.