Taking Care of Business: Why Meeting Culture Matters

If you have ever left a meeting feeling drained and anxious, you’re not alone. Time spent where nothing was accomplished and the ‘to do’ list either grew or remained untouched. Now imagine if repetitive non-productive meetings were the norm at your company. What impact would that have on employees, managers, and workplace morale? Over the long term, what impact could this have on your company’s overall business performance?

Few corporate leaders recognize the link between their meeting culture and organization’s performance; but when they do, without exception they are setting the stage for establishing true competitive advantage.

In this article, we explore:

1. The link between meetings, employee satisfaction, and workplace culture  
2. Why meetings are a key differentiator between thriving and poorly performing companies, and
3. How to kick start the process to transform the way meetings are conducted in your workplace.

The Elephant in the (Meeting) Room  

A survey of executives in Canada revealed that the biggest challenges they believed their organizations would face in 2024 were:

• Externally – the recession, inflation, and labour costs
• Internally – attracting and retaining talent

Benefits Canada recently published results from a survey conducted by RBC Insurance about employee well-being. Employees named the following factors as key contributors to their feelings of negative well-being:  

• Affordability (54%)
• Lack of motivation (35%)
• Busy schedules (33%)
• Mental health (25%)
• Long working hours (19%)

The data highlights that leaders are well aware of the challenges of hiring and maintaining talent but employees are citing deeper issues affecting their well-being. If the root causes of worker dissatisfaction and disengagement were addressed, the implications on employee well-being and organizational recruitment and retention efforts, could be significant.  

A Deep Dive into Factors Influencing Work Culture

Payroll is a company’s largest expense, and on any given work day, 20 to 60% of a company’s people resources are tied up in meetings. That is a fantastic statistic if every meeting was productive, efficient, and enjoyable but this is not reality.  

Short term, poorly run meetings are a waste of time and costly because employees are not attending them for free.

Over the long term, ineffective meetings contribute to poor employee engagement and turnover, negatively impacting overall organizational performance. Additional information on the relationship between meetings, employee churn, and organizational performance, can be found here.

Understanding Meeting Dynamics

Employees who feel the meetings they participate in are productive, focused, and necessary, are more likely to report positively about their employer and job quality. Contrast that with employees who feel that the meetings they attend are boring, long, and a waste of time. These employees are more likely to report negative feelings about the company and their individual roles. Furthermore, the link between job satisfaction and meeting attendance appears even stronger, the more meetings employees are required to attend.  

Meetings directly impact job satisfaction.

Change meeting culture and you can radically affect company culture.  

Are Meetings a Necessary Evil?

They should not be. Consider these meeting alternatives before calling a meeting.

Once a meeting is determined to be necessary, do your managers know how to run them effectively? Given the crucial role meetings play in employee well-being, it is alarming that 75% of managers report that they have never received any meaningful meeting training.

Renowned Organizational Behaviour expert, Dr. Steven Rogelberg, has spent years researching meeting dynamics and their impact. He identifies three ways organizations can gain insight into their meeting culture and facilitate positive organizational change:

1. Identify meeting gaps and weaknesses using assessments and tools
2. Provide real time guidance and prompts to hosts during meetings using data collected
3. Integrate ongoing feedback loops to ensure meeting adjustments are made as needed

Leverage Meeting Culture for Success

The Kairos integrated platform combines all three of the above, enabling business leaders and managers to leverage meetings to create productive and empowered workplaces.  

Based on a unique collaboration with academia and years of research, Kairos provides organizations with customized feedback and guidance to optimize their meeting culture. Specifically:

1. Data and analytics – to identify problems specific to an organization’s meeting culture, and provide recommendations to facilitate lasting change.
2. Meeting prep automation – the single most powerful action leaders can take to improve meetings is to prepare. However, most cite a lack of time caused by today’s rapid pace of business as a barrier to this. Kairos helps automate meeting prep by providing guidance, tools, and prompts to facilitate the preparation process.
3. Revolutionize from the bottom up – typically, 45% of the meetings leaders are invited to are unnecessary. The Kairos tool reviews meeting invites and prepares ‘opt-out’ messaging to ensure time spent in meetings is focused on essential commitments only.

Interested in learning how your meeting culture could be negatively affecting employee morale and impacting your organization’s performance?  

We can help. Get ready to leverage the most powerful tool available to accelerate business success.