Meetings' Hidden Costs

THE HIDDEN COST OF MEETINGS Having countless meetings could seem like no harm, but the truth is there is. There’s a hidden cost of meetings that no one seems to know.

Instead of employees focusing fully on work and managers guiding the process of work, they are all constantly going in and out of meetings.

What is the meeting for? Well, there are a lot of reasons for a company to have meetings. There are effective and ineffective meetings. And when a company has countless meetings without a goal, there could be consequences.

The costs of meetings are numerous and having a good idea of them will be an important way to tackle them.

COST OF MEETINGS There are various consequences that could arise from having countless ineffective meetings, from low productivity costs to financial breakdown. Here is a proper breakdown of each:

LOW PRODUCTIVITY COSTS One of the costs of meetings is the problem associated with how employees tend to lose the energy to complete their work. Imagine having a task that has to be completed in under 8 hours. In between those eight hours, you are expected to attend two meetings at different times. Your boss could see this as trying to improve productivity, but on the other hand, it’s only reducing it. Instead of using your time to be productive, you end up attending ineffective meetings, which leave you feeling tired.

This results in no work being completed at the end of the day.

Could there be such a thing as suffering meeting consequences?

BURNOUT One of the problems with constant meetings is that they take most of the time an employee should use to get work done. For this reason, most employees will have to stay back and complete this work. Some even have to carry their work home, hence no resting. Staying up those late nights and taking anything that could make them stay up the whole night to get the work done. This in turn leads to complete burnout of an employee and an overall drop in productivity. And the resultant outcome affects the company massively.

LOW DECISION MAKING Have you ever attended one of those meetings where you seemed completely lost and couldn’t grasp a thing? Yes, that’s what ineffective meetings are. There’s no way to understand what the goal of a particular meeting is because it wasn’t well planned.

Instead, it takes the time of all the people involved without achieving any goal. At the end of the day, attendees are left with no decisions to make when called upon and can’t tip in suggestions because they obviously have none.

FINANCIAL BREAKDOWN This cost of meetings sums up everything we have discussed so far. It’s obvious how it will be for the company if your employees end up being burned out, which will eventually lead to low productivity. The saying “Time is money” might be just right in this situation. The more time attendees spend on some meetings, the more time to grow financially is wasted.

WHAT IS THE MEETING FOR AND HOW CAN WE MAKE GOOD USE OF IT? We have come up with the solution to all the costs of meetings listed above. First, we need to understand what organizing a meeting should be for.

Firstly, a meeting helps to bring both employees and higher staff together to discuss more on the growth of a company. The growth of the company is the main focus of most meetings. It could be a new strategy to improve a particular sector or anything that could be beneficial to the company as a whole.

Another reason for having meetings is to discuss set goals. A goal that needs to be completed can call for a meeting. The manager might need to hear the opinions of all his employees and see how to formulate a possible strategy to achieve them.

Having meetings without having any of these reasons in mind is definitely a turn-off for your company. In order to have effective meetings, you should consider doing the following: Ensure that meetings are not lengthy for any reason. According to research, the average attention span of a lecture environment is around 18 minutes. To get the best out of your meetings, then conduct them within a short time frame so your employees can get back to work.

Schedule meetings often but not constantly (if need be). It’s important to organize a meeting if there’s a need for it, but not when there’s no point in having one. You should also consider only inviting those who will really need to be at the meeting instead of the entire staff. This will help since those whose attention isn’t needed can continue their work and not feel scared of what could happen if they don’t attend.

CONCLUSION The cost of meetings is a topic most companies need to address if they want to improve low productivity costs. The concept of having a dozen meetings per day should be dropped for the good of companies.