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
