Does it seem like you spend a lot of your work time in meetings? It’s not your imagination! According to a 2017 article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), executives on average spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings. That’s compared to an average of less than 10 hours in the 1960s.
Meetings may be a fact of work life, but according to the HBR, executives across industries often find attending them to be overwhelming. They make the sacrifice because they believe it is what’s best for the business. However, little attention is paid to the real costs of meetings to organizations in terms of their impact on employee engagement, focus, and productivity. Findings cited by the HBR reveal that there’s a real economic impact because dysfunctional meeting behaviors are associated with lower levels of innovation and market share.
Fortunately, there are concrete ways to improve meetings to make sure they aren’t poorly timed and badly run. For one thing, it’s important to use the right technology to establish a collaborative meeting environment. For example, selecting the right wireless display solution and making sure it connects easily to employee devices can make all the difference to the success and productivity of a meeting. Think about how many times you’ve been in a meeting where significant time has been taken up just hooking up equipment and getting presentations to run.
And on the behavioral side, the HBR article identifies five suggested steps to promote engaging and productive meetings:
1. Gather data from employees about meetings
2. Come together as a team to interpret findings to determine what’s working and what’s not
3. Work as a team to set a collective group goal
4. Set milestones and monitor progress
5. Regularly take stock of how people feel about meetings
Ultimately, HBR survey results revealed that if organizations make concerted efforts to improve their approach to meetings and work to make them more productive, employees perceive significant improvements in team collaboration and performance.
Go here to read the whole HBR article. And if you want to learn how ScreenBeam wireless display solutions can help you stop the meeting madness in your workplace, read our article on how to bring wireless collaboration into your meetings or just contact us any time.