Steps and Approaches to Reinventing Meeting Culture and Promoting Workplace Resiliency

Steps and Approaches to Reinventing Meeting Culture and Promoting Workplace Resiliency

Whether to call a meeting is a dilemma. Many managers often sigh and think, “If I didn’t have to have meetings, I would love my job more.” However, it’s management that requests more meetings to catch up on matters most of the time. In view of the purpose of every meeting, seemingly each is very important and necessary. And yet most meetings are actually annoying, too long, and pointless. How can that be?

Is it necessary for business organizations to call so many meetings? Objectively speaking, there’s no disadvantage having a meeting by itself since it’s a part of every organization’s operation, and also a daily activity aimed at maintaining consensus as well as idea transmission. From all employees’ point of view, however, it’s not always case. Apparently, the meeting pattern commonly applied in organizations needs to undergo radical changes. Especially when the overall environment is full of bad news and employees have concerns and doubts related to their lives outside the organization, management ought to adjust meeting patterns to encourage innovation and convey positive changes that contribute to the stabilization of employee morale.

Employee Annoyance with Meetings

Gartner, an international research and advisory company, conducted a survey on meeting culture in 2019, collecting experiences of attending meetings from 7,261 employees in the USA, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. Generally speaking, the significant pain point for them regarding meetings rested in overloading, which derived from an increasing number of global and local conferences as well as from cross-generational differences in attitude. The survey demonstrated that on average the respondents spent 11.7 hours per week on meetings, accounting for a quarter of their working time. Some 9% of respondents spent more than 20 hours in meetings every week, while 61% of respondents indicated that meetings would be better if their organizations focused on more human elements.

Resource: Gartner Survey Analysis: Accommodate Different Meeting Cultures and Technology Expectations for a Digital Workforce (29 August 2019 Published)

In addition, the survey found that contemporary employees possessed different opinions on the places and forms of meetings. An impressive 64% of respondents said they could work efficiently anywhere while the remainder replied that they would only wish to be part of meetings taking place where they usually worked.

Similarly, 64% of respondents exhibited flexibility for meeting location and format, while 36% preferred traditional meetings in company facilities. On average, respondents spent 62% of meeting time on face-to-face meetings, 18% on phone meetings, and 19% on conference calls. It was noteworthy that respondents would rather reduce the frequency of face-to-face meetings and slightly increase that of conference calls.

Meeting culture also varied across generations. Meeting locations and forms were more flexible for young generations than senior ones. The survey showed that employees under 35 years old spent 21% of their meeting time on conference calls, which was more than the time employees over 35 did, at only 17.5%. Additionally, younger generations showed spontaneity in choosing a location for conference calls, with a tendency to have meetings right at their desks.

Resource: Gartner Survey Analysis: Accommodate Different Meeting Cultures and Technology Expectations for a Digital Workforce (29 August 2019 Published)

Observing these behaviors, we can outline a “worldview of annoying meetings”. There are usually too many meetings (including those we don’t want to attend but have no choice in the matter). Meetings take too much time for too little progress or gain, and as a result management responds by arranging even more meetings, increasing frequency and employee frustration. Moreover, the effects of recent developments come into play. . First, globalization expands business range, extending the traffic time required for face-to-face meetings. Second, there’s the technological gap. Senior management isn’t used to the style of conference calls that uses regular smartphones as opposed to fancy conference room equipment. The third difference are the various working ways of different generations. Young employees are liable to start discussions anywhere. All these differences and factors hinder meeting efficiency and cause more trouble, affecting overall productivity and workplace atmosphere.

Review the Current Meeting Landscape in Three Steps

How can management solve these problems? How to instill new vitality in workplace culture and meeting patterns? That can be implemented in three steps.

1. Solve the problem of redundant meetings and exclude unnecessary attendees

First of all, the purpose of meetings should be clarified. It’s important to not invite employees who are unrelated to the core purpose of the meeting. Transmitting updated schedules and processes at all times serve as supplementary measures to make sure unhindered communication within organizations. As long as every single meeting is carried out with high efficiency, business affairs are able to be leaner and improved. As a result, fewer employees will regard meetings as redundant.

2. Improve meeting quality

Lengthy, boring, and substance-less meetings are associated with communication efficacy, which can be improved in the long term by revising agendas and introducing new technological aids related to meetings. . Technologies that enable more flexible meetings overcome the difficulties and variable presented by contemporary developments. . Technology encourages meeting mobility, allowing conferences at any location via teleconferencing and high speed connections. . While the root cause of the different working ways of various employee and management generations rests in the different periods in which they were first exposes to technology, those hurdles can be overcome. Select devices have such obvious and universal benefit that they appeal to anyone with an interest in work and meeting efficiency. Every enterprise should therefore ask these questions:

1. Are remote meetings and off-site collaboration suitable for our company?
2. Can face-to-face meetings help accelerate communication?
3. Can technology assist employees to hold effective meetings anywhere?
4. Can employees from different generations accept and use devices??

3. Apply those questions to your meeting environment and evaluate your meetings spaces

Gartner highlights four typical meeting spaces in another study of modern meeting environments, including:

■ Basic conference room: most businesses have basic conference rooms, whose capacity is four to twenty four people. Meetings in conference rooms mostly start with a brief presentation from the lead manager, followed by group discussions.

■ Huddle space and private office: this kind of meetings use flexible ad hoc spaces, such as the cafeteria, atrium, corridor, and other public spaces. These spaces are appropriate for group discussions of two to three people. The meeting atmosphere is more relaxed and good for brainstorming.

■ Collaborative project room: usually called a “war room”, which is exclusively used by a specific team in a particular period. Sometimes only employees relevant to the project are allowed to enter the room. The project room is equipped as an official presentation space or a repurposed unofficial conference room and has devices offering display capabilities for large amounts of information.

■ Executive briefing: normally it’s a larger space for an official speech with limited need for collaboration. Instead, high quality presentation and equipment reliability are of utmost concern.

The survey by Gartner demonstrates that most high end companies need to provide these meeting spaces to conform to the collaborative activities of diverse meeting patterns. Businesses are also recommended to configure appropriate technological devices based on different spaces so as to meet the communication requirements of contemporary employees, and in turn improve overall productivity and efficiency in organizations.

Nobody likes to have meetings. To be more precise, nobody likes to have inefficient meetings.

Modern meeting patterns gradually continue to leave the image of people sitting at desks and facing a person speaking by a whiteboard as in the past. We are increasingly used to more interactive and visual means that illustrate concepts, while a growing number of supplemental materials often accompanies access to data during in-depth discussions. Remote access to data or searching on the internet is necessary. We rely on instant communication and are inclined to begin discussions right from our mobile devices. It’s not essential for employees to have face-to-face meetings every time. Instead, they can play the same key role by using their phones and attend conference calls so as to overcome geographical constraints. Employees are able to arrange better working schedules. In brief, modern meetings demand agendas, spaces, and devices that improve interactive communications and off-site collaboration, helping businesses create a resilient workplace culture that can easily withstand external challenges such as political, environmental, or public health crises.

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