Most employees know the feeling of sitting through an unproductive, long meeting that could have achieved the same results – perhaps more effectively – in an email.
An estimated 59% of people in the workforce now maintain a hybrid schedule of part-time in the office and part-time remote, according to a recent report from work and organizational researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the work management platform Asana. Additionally, only 13% of people surveyed said they work traditional 9-to-5 hours, opting instead for "nonlinear workdays broken up into blocks." And asynchronous work, in which people exchange messages and information without the need for immediate response, has spiked to 81%, the report said.
In the wake of these changes – partly the result of the COVID-19 pandemic – the number of meetings in workplaces, either remote or in-person, has ballooned. More than 40% of workers said they dreaded meetings, according to the report, which also found workers spend 5 hours each week in unproductive meetings — double the total from 2019.
The lingering effects of poorly run meetings can hurt productivity and morale, a phenomenon the researchers termed "meeting hangover." More than 90% of people surveyed said they had experienced meeting hangovers, according to a Harvard Business Review article published in February.
The good news is that both leaders and workers can take steps to make meetings more productive and less demoralizing, according to the researchers.
The report found that among workers experiencing meeting hangovers:
• 59% cited irrelevance of the topics discussed.
• 59% cited lack of a clear agenda or objectives.
• 53% cited poor time management.
• 48% cited lack of actionable outcomes or follow-up.
• 39% cited unequal low participation.
• 30% cited ineffective facilitation.
As a result, more than half of people surveyed said meeting hangovers affected their productivity, 47% said meeting hangovers made them feel less engaged with their work, and 47% said meeting hangovers increased a sense of alienation from co-workers.
How to prevent meeting hangovers
Researchers recommend leaders take the following actions to prevent meeting hangovers:
• Facilitate meetings and value worker input rather than dominating meetings.
• Whittle down who needs to attend meetings to just those people essential for the agenda.
• Stick to the timeframe and don't let meetings run over.
• Turn discussion into action by assigning people to follow through on each agenda item.
How to recover from a meeting hangover
To recover from a meeting hangover, researchers recommend:
• Take a quick walk outside.
• Do some deep breathing.
• Rather than venting with co-workers, talk about possible solutions.
"Chatting with your colleague about how to deal with the situation for the future, getting their thoughts, engaging in sense-making where you're trying to understand, taking different perspectives on what just happened — those types of conversations increase your skills and your resilience when you do have a bad meeting," Steven Rogelberg, a UNC Charlotte professor and author of "The Surprising Science of Meetings," told CBS.
