This week on The JSA Blog, we’re sharing some news based on what we are seeing in the current marketplace.
Managing a busy work schedule has always been a challenge for workers with only so many hours in the day. In today’s post pandemic work environment, which often includes remote working or a hybrid work model, meetings have been filling employees’ calendars more than ever before. Topics that used to be covered with a brief discussion by the water cooler are turning into 30 minute blocks on the calendar as a Zoom meeting.
A recent survey showed nearly half of employees agreed that they had “too many unnecessary meetings on their calendar.” It’s not that meetings are truly unnecessary, more-so that many meetings go off on tangents, get off topic, and don’t have a clear agenda or someone steering the direction of the meeting. Some companies are proactively trying to fight against the meeting madness, by introducing meeting-free days or weeks to free up employee time, creativity & productivity.
The truth is that especially in this day and age of remote working, meetings are vital to successful communication between colleagues at most organizations. It’s important to strive for a good balance between effective communication and not overdoing it with endless meetings. Productivity and human resource experts weighed in on the subject and offered the following tips to control your meeting schedule:
- Does this warrant a meeting, or could this be accomplished by email/phone/text?
- Give some breathing room. Try not to schedule meetings back to back without at least a 10-15 minute break in between.
- Give a specific purpose and agenda to your meetings.
- Don’t default to 30/60 minute meetings. Challenge yourself to cut 10 minutes here and there.
- Be on time.
- Cancel a recurring meeting if there is no update. Don’t feel obligated to honor the meeting if there is truly nothing on the agenda.
For more details and to read the full article from WorkLife.news, click the link below!
