Useless Meetings Waste Time and $100 Million a Year for Big Companies

Useless Meetings Waste Time and $100 Million a Year for Big Companies

Large companies could save as much as $100 million a year by holding fewer unnecessary meetings and cutting down on their invite lists, according to a recent study.

A common refrain among workers who were polled as part of the report — produced for meeting note software maker Otter.ai by Steven G. Rogelberg, a UNC Charlotte professor and expert on meeting strategy — was that they are pulled into too many time-wasting gatherings. That often leads to boredom and frustration, with employees saying the squandered time interfered with their completing more productive work, the survey found.

Overall, companies spend a total of $37 billion per year on meetings, according to Harvard Business Review, underlining the enormous investment in such communications. For example, a previous study by Rogelberg published in Small Group Research, a scholarly journal, cited research that found copy-machine maker Xerox spent more than $100 million a year on meetings in their manufacturing and development unit.

But much of that money appears to be ill-spent, his research suggests. Rogelberg's survey of 632 workers across 20 industries asked how many meetings they attend in a week and whether respondents felt their presence had been critical. The answer? Respondents said they didn't need to be in 30% of the gatherings they attended.

"The most valid account of whether something was necessary is the individual report. They are the best arbiter of whether they felt like their time was actually used well and honored or if it was wasted," Rogelberg told CBS MoneyWatch

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