We all know how annoying and soul-crushing a poorly run meeting can be. Time slows to a crawl. The clock seems to tick backwards. Legs fall asleep. Coffee stops working. Yawns infect the room. Employees throw dagger eyes at the boss, their ire barely contained: why, their faces say, why oh why are we even here.
Meetings like this are sadly not an exception to the rule. 50 percent of people find meetings to be unproductive, and 73 percent of employees do other work in meetings. And why might all of these people be mentally straying from the matter at hand? It might have something to do with this number: 75 percent of people have received no training on how to conduct a meeting. So of course we’re all fed up with meeting culture--too few people know how to manage a room full of employees.
But mismanaged and unnecessary meetings have a negative impact on more than just morale. Consistent misuse of meeting time can put a huge financial strain on a company. Meetings are estimated to waste $37 billion a year in the United States--a Fortune 50 company, for instance, estimates losses totaling approximately $75 million a year due to meeting misadventure.
Poor meeting facilitation isn’t the only problem, however. The simple fact is that we are probably all simply attending too many meetings. Executives spend 40% to 50% of their working hours in meetings. And are those hours all used in meaningful ways? No. Of the 23 hours executives spend in meetings per week, nearly eight of those hours aren’t even necessary. That’s a couple months per year down the drain.
We need to start thinking about meetings in new and different ways. Some of this is simply a matter of training meeting moderators to better manage the potential chaos that ensues when a group of people are in a room. A skilled moderator will be able to keep off-the-subject chats to a minimum and guide participants back to the salient points.
But it’s more than just a matter of training. Video conferencing should also be a key component of any company’s overhaul of meeting strategy. The savings on travel costs alone should make any company consider switching over to video conferences. A video solution with recording and streaming features can drastically cut down on the kind of overstuffed meeting roster that keeps employees from the work they actually should be doing. By recording meetings and making them available for streaming at a later date, managers can (and should) invite only the most crucial team members to a meeting. If anything comes up that other people should know about, it’s retrievable by any employees who might need to access it.
That’s only scratching the surface, though.
Learn more about our many video conferencing solutions and please contact us if you have any questions. We will have one of our experts get back to you shortly.
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