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Too Many Meetings At Work: How To Solve It

Too many meetings in the workplace are a phenomenon of our times. Yet, when used effectively, meetings can be a productive and vital part of our collaboration. In our article, we’ll show you why this situation arises and how teams and companies should approach it.

Jannik Lindner
Jannik Lindner
  • Last Updated: February 28, 2024

Excessive meetings in the workplace lead to two major issues: employees feel frustrated spending a large part of their day in meetings, and it poses a cost problem for companies, as too many meetings can be expensive. Our Meeting Cost Calculator clearly demonstrates that too many meetings are a significant issue, and the statistics we have compiled on meetings also show a clear picture.

In this article, we’ll offer new perspectives on this topic. We’ll explore the problems causing an excess of meetings and provide strategies for companies, team leaders, and managers to address this issue.

Why do we have too many meetings at work?

Let’s look at the problem first. We’ve distilled 5 reasons for too many meetings at the workplace.

Reason Number 1: Meetings are easy

If I need to exchange information from a to b, I can use text, video or phone to deliver my message. Most people are not comfortable writing text or recording videos. Meetings are the easy way out and for the majority of people, they work really well. This is why meetings are also a standard communication tool and they are also justified – because complex decisions cannot be made without meetings. More on that later.

Reason Number 2: People like Meetings

Yes, people actually like meetings. Have you ever had the chance to work a couple of days completely without any meetings? If so, you might know that it will get “boring”. Social interaction is a key part of doing work. Besides that, people are often unsecure. With meetings, they can get immediate feedback from their managers and avoid mistakes. Lastly, meetings make you feel productive even when you are not. This is an easy way out for many people.

Reason Number 3: Managers like Meetings

Meetings remain an effective control mechanism. Some managers perceive conducting meetings as a core aspect of their role, believing it’s integral to effective leadership. These managers rely on meetings for crucial insights and decision-making. However, they may not be aware of alternative management methods or fear excluding team members.

Reason Number 4: Meetings are the Standard

Meetings have been there for a long time. And they won’t go away anywhere soon. Without meetings, it wouldn’t be possible to run a company (for most people). However, if there are too many meetings within a company, it can kill the entire productivity. Many organizations default to scheduling meetings for any issue, big or small, without considering alternative communication methods like emails, memos, or messaging platforms. Many managers and employees are not trained in running efficient, effective meetings. As a result, meetings can often be unstructured, lack clear objectives, or go off-topic, leading to wasted time and resources.

Reason Number 4: Culture

Over-Inclusiveness, status, cultural mix-up between being busy and being productive, resistance to change and learn new ways of working, Lack of Autonomy and Empowerment, you name it.

There are many reasons why we have too many meetings and there is no simple solution to solve them. One of the big problems with meeting culture is, that there is nobody responsible for meeting efficiency. Nobody is measuring it, nobody is solving it. The CEO has many other problems at the top of his to-do list.

Too Many Meetings At Work: How To Solve It: Step-By-Step

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Step 1: Establish Meeting Processes and Guidelines

Meetings are part of internal communication and generate costs. We therefore believe that meetings need a framework and should follow processes. Do the employees in your team or in your company even know when to schedule a meeting, are there any guidelines? If not, then this is a good starting point for reducing the number of meetings. For example, meetings that are purely for passing information from A to B should be reduced. Instead, meetings should focus more on solving important bottlenecks in current projects or more complex problems. Meetings are perfect for this.

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Step 2: Organize Meetings

Meetings become inefficient because the participants do not have enough time to prepare properly – or because the priorities are not set correctly. As a manager or managing director, you should therefore ensure that communication is clearly regulated and centralized and that important information is written down and can be found quickly.

For example, you can introduce a tool such as ZipDo, which automatically imports meetings via the calendar and creates a collaborative workspace for each meeting, in which notes or meeting agendas, for example, can be stored centrally.

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Step 3: Eliminate unnecessary meetings

Unnecessary meetings should be canceled. As already mentioned, meetings should not primarily serve to pass on information. Asynchronous channels such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, email or ZipDo are much better suited for this. A project management tool can also be used for more complex projects. Meetings should also have a clear objective as well.

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Step 4: Set a collaborative Meeting Agenda

The meeting agenda is an underestimated tool that gives the meeting its thematic framework. In practice, it is often not used correctly as there is no central tool. It is often sent by email, where it is easily overlooked by participants. In ZipDo, the meeting agenda can be created centrally in a meeting channel so that all participants can access it without further approval. This ensures that the meeting has a common thread.

Read more about the meeting agenda here.

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Step 5: Only invite the necessary participants

The higher the number of participants in the meeting, the more inefficient and costly it becomes. The number of participants should therefore be strictly limited. But how does a company ensure that important information is passed on and accessible if not all participants in a project attend all meetings? In ZipDo, we have solved this by simply inviting participants to the relevant meeting channel. Even if they don’t attend all meetings, they still have access to all meeting agendas, action items and meeting notes.

Conclusion

Meetings have their place in the workplace, yet they are responsible for high annual costs and also cause frustration on the employee side. The number of meetings should therefore be reduced. With our tips in the article, we have given you a few initial pointers that will hopefully help you. We look forward to your feedback!

Jannik Lindner

I'm Jannik and I write on MeetingFever about the experiences from my career as a founder and team lead.

If you have any questions, please contact me via LinkedIn.

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