11 ways to make your meetings work for you
Face-to-face meetings are back on the agenda for many of us. But now we’re used to virtual platforms keeping tabs on time, how do we reboot our real-life rendezvous?
We’ve all been there. You down tools, pull yourself away from your desk, and head to the conference room for that project-progress meeting.
You take your seat at the table, and the meeting sets sail. First, the pleasantries. Followed by the ‘brief’ review of the project itself. Whoops – someone’s arrived late. Cue the reiteration of what’s already been said to bring the latecomer up-to-speed.
By this point, 10 minutes of the allotted 45-minute timeslot has already passed – and not a smidgen of real progress has been made. And the likely outcome? You’re not getting out of that meeting any time soon.
Is this a familiar experience to you? We wouldn’t be surprised. Often, it can feel like meetings are our adversary, rather than our ally in the workplace – slowing us down, putting a stopper on our productivity, and generally boring the socks off us.
But, whether we like it or not, meetings – virtual or face-to-face – have become deeply engrained within organisational cultures all over the world. And sometimes, they can be genuinely useful – nurturing increased innovation, creativity and ideas.
The problem is that most of the time we spend in meetings ends up going tragically to waste.
We enter them with the best intentions that they’ll give our productivity a leg-up, letting us quickly brainstorm ideas and communicate dynamically with our teams.
But as we’re sure you can relate to – in most cases, sadly the exact opposite is true.
The trouble with meetings...
Even though meetings are only a small part of everything we have to do at work, they can start to seriously encroach on the time we have to focus on meaningful independent work when they run past the allotted slot.
And when they fail to focus on or produce anything of real value, they can feel more like time vacuums – draining our energy while leaving us scrambling to hit targets and deadlines with much less time to spare.
It’s safe to say this is not the best way to drive positive business results.
Unfortunately, the data we have to hand paints a rather disheartening picture of just how counter-productive our meetings are. Do any of the following solemn stats ring true for you?
To start with, research by Atlassian shows that, on average, employees have their time sapped away from them by no fewer than 62 meetings a month.
If all those meetings were, let’s say, an hour long – that’s over a third of monthly working time spent chewing the cud with colleagues, without necessarily achieving anything particularly valuable.
But brace yourself – it gets worse. The research goes even deeper to reveal that…
91%
drift right off
and daydream their way through meetings
73%
keep working
on jobs that are not related to the meeting
39%
take a snooze
…and not always by choice, we’re guessing!
45%
feel swamped
and overwhelmed by the sheer number of meetings
47%
complain
that meetings are the number one time-waster at work
96%
are no-shows
…because they’re too busy or stuck in other meetings!
The impact of unproductive meetings on employee engagement
Meetings aren’t the only culprit eating away at our precious time. When you add in other unhelpful distractions like endless emails, social media, and noisy colleagues, it’s no wonder so many employees feel overwhelmed.
And in the midst of all this activity – only three hours of the average employee’s working day is actually spent being genuinely productive. Meaning 63% of our time at work is actually acting against the wider business. Troubling stuff!
Moreover, thanks to time-absorbing meetings, rather than enjoying a stable work-life balance – many employees have continue toiling away at home in order to get work over the line on time.
Which begs the question – how can we create true employee engagement if employees feel compelled to prioritise their work lives above their home lives, without a clear way to fix the problem?
In the midst of all this activity, only three hours of the average employee’s working day is actually spent being genuinely productive.
The fact is, meetings will never stop being a necessity. Organisations are a collective venture, and if no-one came together to discuss projects, ideas, and progress, they’d simply grind to a halt.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t be more proactive and efficient with how we put them to use.
We just need to redress the hugely lopsided balance of useful vs wasted productivity.
After all, meetings don’t get results – it’s people that do.
So we need to focus on how we can make our meetings as valuable as they can be, so our time, effort and productivity can be properly invested where it’ll really make an impact.
So how can we make meetings work, at work?
1. Stick to an agenda
To prevent your meetings from overrunning, create a concrete agenda – and stick to it.
Avoid digression and too much detail. Keep each discussion point short, sweet and to-the-point. And if you’re running the meeting, make sure to always have one finger on its pulse so you can guide it to remain on topic.
2. Banish unnecessary meetings
Before you down tools to head to a meeting, try taking a Marie Kondo approach and ask yourself: ‘will this meeting add value for me?’
If the answer’s yes, go ahead and attend; if it’s a no, politely decline and return to the task at hand. After all, what’s the point in turning up to a meeting that won’t benefit you, and where your presence won’t have any tangible impact on the outcome?
And if you’re organising the meeting, don’t just invite every Tom, Dick and Harry in the office in the hope that they’ll add more ingenious ideas into the mix. At the end of the day, you’ll only cause resentment for taking people’s time away from them when they’ve already got a billion balls to juggle. As the saying goes – too many cooks do indeed spoil the broth!
3. Try out other means of communication instead
It should go without saying, but no matter how powerful the urge is, you should avoid holding a meeting unless it’s absolutely essential.
If you’re looking for collective ideation, you might find a suggestion box, or an online forum, is a much more time-efficient strategy to utilise.
Or perhaps make like a roving reporter, and visit colleagues at their desks for a quick-fire game of ideas-tennis? And if you’re just looking for a quick review or catch-up, maybe email would be an effective alternative.
Here are eight bonus tips we’ve handpicked from our survey asking employees to share their advice for meetings with optimum impact.
1. Plan your meeting. Set achievable objectives and have an idea of the actions you want to come out of it
2. Allocate appropriate time for the meeting, and make sure it suits all attendees
3. Allow people time to prepare beforehand – don’t spring the meeting on them
4. Check all necessary technology is working before committing
5. Create an inclusive, collaborative, and positive environment – give people the confidence and space to share their thoughts and ideas
6. If you’re providing supporting materials, think about how you can make them as fun and interesting as possible
7. Choose an appropriate space for your meeting, and offer refreshments if necessary
8. Don’t rush the planning of your meeting – take the time to make sure it’s as valuable, engaging, and well-thought-out as possible!
You enter meetings with your plate already full – and leave with it piled even higher
It might seem like you’re often shackled by the ceaseless tyranny of endless meetings, investing a lot of your precious, fleeting time for little actual value in return.
You enter meetings with your plate already full – and leave with it piled even higher.
But this perennial problem has a simple solution. It just involves being far more focused around how we can get the most out of them.
Remembering that sometimes, less is definitely more.
If you put our tips into action, you might find that rather than reluctantly complying and resenting the obligation – employees genuinely appreciate the chance to get involved, and share their insights in a meaningful, productive way!
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