Steven Rogelberg, Ph.D. (UNC)

Meetings are a begrudgingly accepted as a necessary evil of the working world.  Everyone complains about them, but do people really hate meetings, and why are there so many?  Surprisingly, there is a dearth of scientific research about meetings.

Meeting Statistics:

• Employees spend approximately 6 hours a week in meetings, while senior managers spend nearly 23 hours in meetings
• Larger organizations spend far more of their time in preparation, conducting, and concluding meetings than their smaller counterparts, 75% compared to 10%
• Professionals average 61.8 meetings a month

Research findings:
There is a curvilinear relationship between feelings of productivity and the number of meetings a day.  A few meetings can help workers feel more productive, but too many meetings can drag them down.

The interpretation of meetings as either interruptions or welcome events in the work day is moderated by accomplishment striving.  For those workers who are high in conscientiousness and goal-oriented, spending more time in meetings was linked to lower job satisfaction.

Meeting lateness is relative, determined by a number of factors including:

• The actual meeting start time
• When the last person arrives
• When the group starts working

A large percentage of meetings do not start on time (44%), leading to employee frustration.  Lateness to meetings may be determined by overall job satisfaction, conscientiousness, and overall satisfaction with meetings.

An interesting finding reported by Dr. Rogelberg was that satisfaction with meetings accounts for unique variance beyond traditional determinants of job satisfaction.  This indicates meeting satisfaction as a unique employee attitude.

Aspects of meetings are linked to the three psychological states underlying employee engagement: meeting relevance, freedom of speech, and time management.  Meeting relevance is related to psychological meaningfulness, the feeling of worth and value of an employee within the workplace.  Freedom of speech is related to psychological safety, the confidence of an employee to express him or herself without negative consequences.  Time management is related to psychological availability, the employee’s sense of support and resources from the organization to perform his or her job.

Consultants have an opportunity to help improve meetings, saving organizations both time and money.  Meetings can be broken down into the organization’s monetary investment in them; these are relatively conservative estimates if they fail to take into account ineffectual meetings, and pre- and post-meeting time.  Assessing the return on investment is key to breaking down the costs of meeting overage and ineffectiveness.  Only then can strategies be created and implemented in order to improve meetings with greater feedback and accountability via inclusion in performance management systems, developing effective meeting leadership, talent management, and changing the organization’s meeting culture.

Meetings are not going away, nor should they.  They should be crafted to be more relevant and productive for those who attend them, and to reduce the number of bad meetings.  Meetings can change, and we can help foster that change.


Reported by: Vivian Woo