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Are meetings soaking up

your precious time?

by Maria Gracia Join our newsletter to be notified when the newest Statistics, Facts, and Figures are available. While some meetings can be productive, many meetings are soaking up more time than you can imagine. According to B Daily Business News, “The average office worker spends 52 minutes each work day in “pointless” meetings to which they do not ultimately contribute anything.” Here are more supporting stats: • Research conducted by the Annenberg School of Communications at UCLA and the University of Minnesota’s Training and  Development Research Center show that executives on average spend 40-50% of their working hours in meetings. The studies also point out that as much as 50% of meeting time is unproductive and that up to 25% is spent discussing irrelevant issues. • According to a survey by MCI Conferencing, most professionals who meet on a regular basis admit that they do the following: daydream 91%, miss meetings 96%, miss parts of meetings 95%, bring other work to meetings 73%. • 63% of the time, typical meetings in America do not have prepared agendas. • Industry Week called meetings "the Great White Collar Crime" estimating they waste 37 billion dollars a year. • According to the National Statistics Council, an average of 37% of employee time is spent in meetings. During an average meeting, agenda items (when there is an agenda) are covered in only 53% of the scheduled time, with the remaining time as unproductive. • Executives average 23 hours per week in meetings where 7.8 hours of the 23 are unnecessary and poorly run, which is 2.3 months per year wasted. Here are five easy way so ensure future meetings you’re in charge of are productive: 1. Always have an agenda. Prepared agendas are a must...and each line item should be “specific” (like brainstorm and come up with a name for “x” product, or make decision on price for “x” based on costs) 2. Always have a leader. Never, never, never do a meeting without a leader or facilitator. “Committee-type” meetings in which nobody is in charge rarely get anywhere. 3. Only involve key people. Hold shorter, more focused meetings and only involve key people. The more people in a meeting, the longer it’s going to go and the less chance anything is going to get done. Plus, you’re wasting people’s time who don’t need to be there. 4. Get someone to summarize results. Have someone at the meetings summarize the results...in other words, who is doing what, by what date. The leader will then have a written summary so he or she can follow up. 5. Separate the meetings from the meals. Lunch or dinner meetings are more about socializing than getting things done. Back to Organizing Statistics, Facts, and Figures Index