Instead of having teams sit in back-to-back meetings all day, consider how you can make team gatherings more effective and energising for all involved.

Like water cooler small-talk, bad email etiquette, and being asked to share a ‘fun fact’ about yourself during an icebreaker game, the idea of attending multiple meetings throughout the workday – often back-to-back and hours long – is enough to make even the most dedicated employee groan. 

But that’s not to say employees want meetings canned for good. In fact, according to a recent survey from Miro, the majority of knowledge workers believe meetings are essential for collaboration and innovation. The challenge, however, is ensuring they aren’t held at the cost of efficiency and productivity.

The toll of meetings for meetings’ sake 

We’ve all experienced the feeling of frustration that comes from being stuck in a meeting that could (or should) have been an email, or having to log on after hours to join a call that didn’t justify the overtime. 

When diaries stretch to accommodate numerous meetings, productivity wanes and feelings of stress and overwhelm can quickly become rife. As meetings eat into crucial work time, people resort to multitasking and are less likely to engage, actively listen and contribute within a group setting. Leaders may also see an increase in the number of people working late, through their lunch breaks, or on weekends, in an effort to stay on top of an overfull schedule. 

When talking about work starts to interfere with doing work, it can often be detrimental not only to productivity, but to employee wellbeing, engagement, and work-life balance.

But while work meetings can get a bad rap, employees don’t necessarily want to scrap them for good—in fact, most people understand their value. It’s only when they lack structure and clear purpose that things can go awry. 

The good news is there are ways to prevent this. As a first step, leaders need to find ways to make meetings more intentional and purposeful to ensure everyone gets the most out of their valuable time. Assessing the relevancy of each meeting – for example, does it justify a dedicated team meet up, or can the outcome be achieved over email?—can help mitigate against overscheduling and the overlapping of work and life. 

Where meetings are required, providing structure via a clear agenda that outlines necessary outcomes and key points of discussion, as well as locking in a hard start and finish time, will ensure meetings are productive and efficient, with minimal time-wasting. 

It’s also important to consider how many meetings are too many. A report by Slack found that more than two hours of meetings a day is the tipping point at which a majority of workers feel overburdened by meetings, so leaders would do well to stick within these bounds where possible. Many employees though are doing 2x or even 3x this amount.

Ways of working have changed – it’s time for meetings to catch up

Modern work practices have challenged the relevance of traditional meetings. In order to lift engagement and productivity, and pave the way for greater innovation, leaders need to bring their company’s meeting culture in line with modern ways of working. 

However, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here. Rather, it begins with taking a closer look at your company’s meeting culture and identifying the key problems. For example, review your current agenda for each meeting, and ask yourself:

• What’s the point of this meeting? It might seem obvious but how often do you step back and consider why you are getting together in the first place?
• Does this meeting have a clear agenda? A well-defined agenda ensures all attendees are prepared, and meetings can remain efficient and on-track. Without an agenda, meetings are more likely to go off-track, run overtime, and miss essential items. 
• Are these the best attendees? Meetings are likely to be ineffective and inefficient if the right attendees aren’t present—potentially meaning subsequent meetings are required in order to get the job done. 
• Is this meeting too long? Most meeting slots are 60 minutes, but they don’t always need to be. In fact, many teams will fill up a full hour, even if key items are covered off in less time. Consider what would happen if you shortened the meeting to 30 minutes, or even 15?
• Does this meeting overlap with another? Sometimes separate meetings will serve a similar purpose, with only slightly different attendees. Consider whether they could be merged to streamline and save time. 
• How can I optimise the meeting? Consider preparing for the meeting asynchronously by sending a talk track (video overview) or document upfront for review—and thereby shorten the time.
• Is it a zombie meeting? Recurring meetings can be valuable to ensure momentum and consistency, but sometimes they continue to happen long after they’ve served their purpose. Is it time to remove this meeting from the diary?

Learn how Amazon employees streamline their time together by conducting silent meetings.

Once you’ve identified the key problems, run experiments and collect feedback to decide how to approach improvements. For example, if a team was to cut down their meeting frequency by 50 per cent and free up half their time for deep work, what would happen? What if they replaced recurring meetings with async updates? 

It’s also vital for leaders to role model best practice behaviours. It’s easy to say everyone should feel empowered to decline meetings that have no context or agenda, but, in reality, this doesn’t work. People don’t want to offend their colleagues— or push against a senior leader who drops a meeting in the diary without a clear reason.

Leaders should role model best practice by ensuring all meetings have a clear agenda, and opt out of meetings if they feel they can’t contribute to the agenda. This will encourage others to follow suit, and over time, will reset the company’s existing meeting culture—ensuring meetings become used as tools for innovation rather than chores to endure.

 Turning awareness into action

Let’s forget the myth that workers hate meetings. They don’t – they just want them to be better.

Understanding what is and isn’t working when it comes to collaboration within your organisation is a great place to start. By addressing common pain points, alongside modern ways of working, leaders can remodel and improve their meeting culture to be more inclusive, efficient, and engaging. Better meetings, mean better experiences for teams. When teams collaborate effectively, productivity and innovation thrive.

 Dominik Katz is the Ways of Working Lead at Miro.