Manager-Led Group Meetings: A Context for Promoting Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Using Kahn’s theory of engagement, we look at an organizational context where employee engagement may be promoted—the workgroup meeting. Two time-separated Internet-based surveys were used to query a sample of working adults (N = 319). The findings provide support that the psychological conditions for engagement mediate the relationship between manager usage/facilitation of meetings and overall employee engagement. Specifically, as managers make their workgroup meetings relevant, allow for employee voice in their meetings where possible, and manage the meeting from a time perspective, employees appear poised to fully engage themselves in their work in general. The results suggest that managers can use a common workplace activity, workgroup meetings, to engage their employees when they use/facilitate meetings in an effective manner

Let\u27s get this meeting started: Meeting lateness and actual meeting outcomes

Meeting lateness is pervasive and potentially highly consequential for individuals, groups, and organizations. In Study 1, we first examined base rates of lateness to meetings in an employee sample and found that meeting lateness is negatively related to both meeting satisfaction and effectiveness. We then conducted two lab studies to better understand the nature of this negative relationship between meeting lateness and meeting outcomes. In Study 2, we manipulated meeting lateness using a confederate and showed that participants\u27 anticipated meeting satisfaction and effectiveness was significantly lower when meetings started late. In Study 3, participants holding actual group meetings were randomly and blindly assigned to either a ten minutes late, five minutes late, or a control condition (n = 16 groups in each condition). We found significant differences concerning participants\u27 perceived meeting satisfaction and meeting effectiveness, as well as objective group performance outcomes (number, quality, and feasibility of ideas produced in the meeting). We also identified differences in negative socioemotional group interaction behaviors depending on meeting lateness. In concert, our findings establish meeting lateness as an important organizational phenomenon and provide important conceptual and empirical implications for meeting research and practice

Mind Your Meetings: Improve Your Organization’s Effectiveness One Meeting at a Time

Managers and executives spend an inordinate amount of time in the estimated 11 million meetings held in the United States every day. In a survey of 1,900 business leaders, 72% indicated they spend more time in meetings today than they did five years ago, and 49% said they expect that time in meetings to increase. Another study revealed that small businesses (fewer than 10 people) spend about 10% of their time preparing, attending, leading and concluding meetings. Larger organizations (500 or more employees) spend about 75% of their work time on these activities. As the number of meetings increases, the quality and value of meetings can have a direct impact on an organization’s bottom line in the form of wasted time and effort, not to mention poor morale. Ineffective meetings are a cost that an organization arguably has the greatest opportunity to control

Using the Web to Effectively Attract Volunteers to Non-Profit Organizations

Non-profit organizations often rely on volunteers to help staff and sustain organizational services, functions, and programs. The web is a critical vehicle for attracting these needed volunteers. The authors searched the available literature and reviewed close to 100 non-profit organizational websites to identify best practices of note. Fourteen best practices in web site design are forwarded and discussed

Meeting Design Characteristics and Attendee Perceptions of Staff/Team Meeting Quality

Meetings are a common tool in organizations and are used for a variety of purposes and implemented in a variety of ways. Despite the prevalence of meetings, surveys suggest that they are often unproductive and costly. The current study focused on how meetings are designed in hopes of providing practically and theoretically meaningful recommendations for improving meeting quality. A total of 18 design characteristics associated with staff/team meetings were identified and their relevance to perceptions of meeting quality was tested. Using an online panel-based respondent pool of working adults, 367 individuals participated in a survey that they completed within 48 hr of their most recent staff/team meeting. The results demonstrated that 9 of the design characteristics, spanning all 4 categories of design characteristics (i.e., temporal, physical, procedural, and attendee), significantly predicted perceptions of meeting quality. Furthermore, this study validated and greatly extended previous research showing that agenda use, meeting punctuality, facility quality, and meeting facilitator status relate to meeting quality. In addition, this study identified specific relationships to meeting quality for several facility quality characteristics, including lighting, meeting space, refreshments, and temperature, and expanded our knowledge of key characteristics by identifying agreement use and the number of attendees as important. Taken together, these findings suggest that effective meeting design warrants holistic attention to all meeting aspects. These results were robust across demographics, including organizational type, gender, and supervisory status. Implications for meeting design are discussed

The critical importance of meetings to leader and organizational success: Evidence-based insights and implications for key stakeholders

Consider the following estimates about the current state of workplace meetings in the United States. There are as many as 55 million meetings every single work day. Employees spend on average six hours per week sitting in meetings. Their managers spend even more time in meetings, with averages around 23 hours per week, and with some spending up to 80% of their work time in meetings. Overall, a large amount of organizational resources (i.e., employee time and salaries) go into meetings. Estimates suggest that most organizations devote between 7 and 15 percent of their personnel budgets to meetings At the same time, some estimates indicate that as many as half of all work meetings are rated as “poor”, leading organizations to waste at least 213 billion of the dollars they spend on meetings per year. These numbers have vast implications in terms of the return on investment for organizations. They also have implications for employees’ perceptions of their work and their organization

Shouldering a silent burden: The toll of dirty tasks

Dirty work involves tasks that are stigmatized owing to characteristics that the public finds disgusting, degrading, or objectionable. Conservation of resources theory suggests such experiences should induce strain and decreased work satisfaction; social identity theory suggests such work should lead to strong psychological investment in the work, among other outcomes. Integrating these two perspectives, this study hypothesizes and presents quantitative evidence from 499 animal-shelter workers, demonstrating how dirty-work engagement relates to higher levels of strain, job involvement, and reluctance to discuss work while negatively influencing work satisfaction. Additionally, this study takes a unique perspective on dirty work by focusing on dirty tasks within a dirty-work occupation. The data suggest meaningful differences between the outcomes of dirty-task frequency and dirty-task psychological salience, providing additional insight into the complexity of stigmatized occupations and ways in which future research and theory benefit as a result