Useless meetings waste time and US$100mil a year for big companies

Ever feel no one is really listening on online meetings? Data from Microsoft Corp based on thousands of users of its workplace software found that time spent in meetings has more than tripled since February 2020, and the number of weekly meetings has more than doubled. — dpa

Unnecessary meetings are a US$100mil (RM461.15mil) mistake at big companies, according to a new survey that shows workers probably don’t need to be in nearly a third of the appointments they attend.

The survey, conducted over the summer by Steven Rogelberg, a professor of organisational science, psychology and management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, asked 632 employees across 20 industries to study their weekly calendars and gauge how much time they actually spent in meetings, what they got out of them and how they responded to invitations.