Half Of Your Meetings Are Unproductive: 12 Ideas To Reduce Them

While companies realize that hybrid is here to stay, employees lose the battle with meetings. For example, Microsoft MSFT reported a 252% increase in weekly time spent in meetings for the average Teams user since February 2020.

With this trend and its consequent increase in stress, burnout and reduced psychological safety, some companies are testing meeting-free days.

The Goal of Meeting-Free Days

In my previous article, I shared research that showed how by reducing meetings by 60%, especially having a three meeting-free days a-week policy, companies could improve autonomy, engagement and collaboration and reduce micro-management and stress.

Now, reducing meetings by such a large percentage is not only about moving all the appointments to those days but also about being more aware of how much time and energy is wasted and working to improve it.

A great example I always use to see how you can improve time during meetings is by using SMED, a technique that Formula 1 and Nascar utilize to reduce time spent changing tires. Most people would easily take at least 15 minutes to change one single tire. So how do Formula 1 cars change all four tires in 2.5 seconds? They understand that time is money and that any extra second counts. Estimate how much time you spend in meetings, then estimate your hourly rate, and do the math. Of course, you will want to reduce meetings too.

12 Ideas to Reduce Your Meeting Time

Review the meetings you lead and attend, and ask yourself the following triggering questions to come up with ideas to reduce your time spent in meetings:

1. Is this meeting essential to accomplish my goals?
2. Can the frequency be reduced or spaced out?
3. Are all the attendees actively participating? Do they all need to attend? How can you help them contribute more effectively?
4. Can the objective be accomplished through other means, like Slack, mail or a phone call?
5. Can the meeting be reduced to 30 minutes? What about 15 minutes?
6. Can you update the company software/app so that your typical meeting is set to be shorter by 15 minutes?
7. Can the meeting be replaced with a shorter 1-on-1 connection?
8. Can any tasks be done before or after the meeting, to make it shorter but more productive?
9. Is the meeting organized enough to accomplish its objective? For example, is an agenda, notetaker, timekeeper or whiteboard needed?
10. Do you need other resources/roles to help you make it more effective?
11. Do you need to train your team to speak in meetings so that they are more concise or better prepared?
12. Ultimately, if in doubt, how would it hurt to try?

While a first may sound challenging to reduce meetings, inviting everyone to get involved by stating why will gain traction over time. It is no secret that almost every employee complains about meetings. By reducing the company time on meetings and improving the productivity of the remaining ones, collaboration and engagement will increase, while stress, anxiety and burnout will be significantly reduced. Productivity will skyrocket, no doubt.