An Atlassian study involving 5,000 workers globally revealed that excessive meetings are a significant productivity hindrance, surpassing other issues like lack of motivation and unclear responsibilities. The study found that 80% of employees struggle to complete their primary work due to the high volume of meetings, and more than half leave meetings without clear action items. Additionally, 77% indicated that meetings often lead to more meetings, with many having to work overtime to compensate for lost time.
Effective meetings, according to the study, have clear agendas and are concise, with many workers suggesting that a typical 30-minute meeting could be completed in half that time. This finding suggests that shorter meetings could enhance productivity.
Atlassian’s research also highlighted common meeting pitfalls, such as domination by a few participants, meetings being used for information that could have been communicated via email, lack of clear objectives, and ineffectiveness in fostering genuine collaboration or decision-making.
To improve meeting efficiency, Atlassian recommends empowering employees to decline non-essential meetings, training hosts to handle declines appropriately, and using facilitators to ensure broad participation. Pre-sharing agendas and discussion points can help prepare all attendees, particularly introverts, for more meaningful participation. Moreover, Atlassian suggests that workers should allocate specific times for focused work and communication to mitigate the productivity loss from constant task switching, a problem underscored by both project management insights and psychological research on the cognitive cost of frequent interruptions.
