Why we keep scheduling and attending non-productive meetings

Interested in more careers-related content? Check out our new weekly Work Life newsletter. Sent every Monday afternoon.

Employees love to complain about meetings, often viewing them as costly, unproductive and a waste of time, yet they continue to be scheduled – even more so since the pandemic.

A 2022 Microsoft survey found the number of meetings per week for the average Teams user had increased 153 per cent since 2020, owing to the increase in hybrid work. Two years later, Microsoft found meeting levels were still holding at their post-pandemic highs.

While employees may view meetings as a punishing way to spend their working hours, research shows all that time with your colleagues could be beneficial to your career.

According to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which studied 9,000 workers in Norway, meetings take up 12 per cent of working hours and 14 per cent of payroll but are also associated with wage growth and on-the-job learning.

“Workers in meeting-intensive firms report greater on-the-job learning, and interactions with more senior colleagues are associated with stronger wage growth, suggesting that knowledge transmission within firms is an important mechanism,” the paper states.

“Meetings are the broccoli of work – widely disliked, but probably good for us anyway.”

A 2019 study published in Organization Science also found that managers reward employees who use visibility and availability to signal commitment in ways such as showing up for meetings at inconvenient hours and making their participation visible on video calls.

An analysis of two million white-collar workers by employment-data provider Live Data Technologies found remote workers in 2023 were promoted 31-per-cent less often than in-office employees. And nearly 90 per cent of chief executives surveyed said they are more likely to reward employees who make an effort to come to the office when it came to good assignments, raises or promotions.

The social benefits of meetings

Meetings also have benefits beyond career growth, including providing people with an identity, belonging and purpose, experts say.

Work has come to play an outsized role in how people understand themselves, says Erin Cech, an associate professor in the sociology department at the University of Michigan.

“In many post-industrial societies, the places that people find identity and meaning are less about community spaces, or even family, and have become more about their identity as workers,” says Prof. Cech, author of The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality. “That sense of engagement with others around work is a way of reaffirming one’s sense of identity.”

Work also provides value to our social lives, she says

“Work takes up so much of our time that many of us don’t have the same opportunities to build rich social lives outside of it,” Prof.Cech says. “The people at work are our social network.”

Research from the Survey Center on American Life found that work was the most common place Americans met close friends, ahead of school, neighbourhoods, places of worship and through their existing network. More than two-thirds also had “situational” or “place-based” friends – people they saw mainly at work, school or the gym.

That might explain why our relationship with meetings is so contradictory; we resent the time demand while relying on them for human contact.

For all the complaints about wasted time and lost productivity, “a big chunk of meetings is people wanting to talk,” says Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto and author of the new book I Want M.O.R.E.: Why Your Job Still Matters.

It helps explain why meetings multiplied with remote work. The office provides plenty of interaction that never needs to be scheduled, much of it reinforcing relationships, belonging and who stands where. Without it, some of that interaction moved onto the calendar.

“Take away the other social elements of life and then people are like, okay, well, my Zoom call with my colleagues is what I have left,” Prof. Schieman says.

Still, he says, it’s not quite the same as in-person communication .

“I think face-to-face is much healthier,” he says, adding that people who meet in person can pick up on non-verbal cues and “read the room.” Online, he adds, it’s easier to divide our attention, turn off the camera or go have a snack.

Meetings also have a way or reinforcing where employees rank. For example, Prof. Schieman says where people sit – at the table or the back of the room – can signal who matters and who doesn’t (or matters less).

“There is that element of status,” he says. “Especially for higher-ups. They want to have that sense of status and control over the situation and over other workers, for better or worse.”

How to make meetings more effective

Just because meetings are good for you doesn’t mean the experience can’t be improved.

If you’re calling the meeting, ask what you need from it. Is there work that needs to be done or are you looking for connection, reassurance, status or a reason to talk to someone? Is this a work problem or an existential one?

If you’re the invitee, the calculation is harder. A meeting can be pointless and still matter because showing up can be important even when nothing gets accomplished and you’d have preferred getting actual work done.

Even if there is something pressing on your desk, you can always go into a meeting with the goal of getting something out of it, even if those benefits are social or will set you up for more long-term success.