As employers work hard to create meaningful, productive employee experiences, there is one ailment that continues to plague the workforce: too many meetings. Employees are suffering from what’s been dubbed as ‘meeting fatigue.’
There are 55 million meetings in the United States every single day. Most are inefficient, overcrowded, and unproductive. People arrive unprepared. Too many, or too few, people are included. In short, most meetings are a waste of time.
A digital workplace with a mobile team communications app reduces the need for in-person meetings by providing an alternative, virtual space for collaboration. And it’s often more effective, too.
Here’s why:
Fewer Meetings Means Higher Employee Engagement
Meeting fatigue is real, and it’s taking its toll on employees. The excessive amount of meetings in today’s workplace leads to an overscheduled, unproductive, and disengaged workforce.
“The Science and Fiction of Meetings”, an article published in the MIT Sloan Management Review, reports that employees “tend to report poorer job satisfaction as the number of meetings they attend increases.”
Meetings add to employee overload and create longer workdays. Morale plummets when employees’ work-life balance is impacted.
Digital Workplace Collaboration Is the Future
Meetings are meant to be collaborative gatherings with an exchange of ideas that yields greater innovation and output. But in reality, meetings have become tedious, overused, and unproductive. It can be hard to get a group of people to generate a lasting idea within a set amount of time before they lose focus.
A digital workplace is a more time efficient alternative to meetings and doesn’t decrease job satisfaction. In fact, studies have shown that a team app actually increases engagement through inclusivity and empowering every employee with the ability to contribute to internal communications.
A digital workplace allows for greater collaboration in several ways.
- Give employees access to real-time communication features designed for collaboration. From chatbots to surveys to direct messaging, a team app offers a wide variety of real-time communication options to improve workplace collaboration.
- Promote inclusivity. Anyone can initiate a meeting for greater innovation. In many offices, meeting times and agendas come from the top down. But in a world where 80% of the workforce is mobile (and without a company email address), a team app flattens the hierarchy by facilitating two-way communication. Every employee has a chance to initiate collaboration virtually.
- Keeps collaboration going. Here’s a scenario that happens way too often: teamwork in a meeting room is palpable. Ideas are flying, and the energy is high. Then, when people leave, that energy dissipates. A digital workplace keeps the momentum going through ongoing, real-time dialogue and a constant exchange of ideas.
Watch how 1 Hotels uses Beekeeper in their daily Morning Rallies to communicate vital operational information to their team each day.
A Digital Workplace Offers More Opportunities for Greater Productivity.
One in three meetings are a waste of time for employees. They are often invited to meetings that are irrelevant to their work. Productivity takes a huge hit when employees are unnecessarily taken away from the tasks they actually have to perform. Meetings often break an employee’s workflow, drastically reducing productivity and motivation.
One Harvard Business Review study found 64% of respondents felt meetings disrupt “deep thinking” and independent work.
With a team communication app like Beekeeper’s mobile-first platform, a dialogue can take place online rather than in person allowing companies to have fewer meetings. Messages and information can be exchanged through: video, chats, direct messages, group chats, or file sharing. Employees use their mobile devices to start a dialogue that can accomplish the same goals as a meeting without dominating their schedules and adding to their workloads.
A Team App Resolves Time-Sensitive Issues Faster
When an urgent matter needs to be addressed by a group, it can be difficult to schedule a last-minute meeting and quickly assemble the necessary people.
A team communication app can tackle time-sensitive issues by:
- Offering real-time communication to allow everyone to send and receive immediate input. With Beekeeper’s read receipt feature the organizer can see exactly who has read the urgent message.
- Creating a dialogue regardless of location. Instead of waiting for people to arrive in person, messages are instantly dispersed through a digital platform. Off-site or out-of-office employees can still participate to resolve the matter.
Meetings Cost Money
Too many meetings are more than an inconvenience. Think of the time wasted for every employee and actual work that’s disrupted by too many meetings. That adds up.
The price tag for this lack of productivity and inefficiency is estimated to be $37 billion every year.
Meetings are still a necessary part of running a company. That face-to-face time is valuable, but people need to be more conscious of when and why they schedule them, and who they invite. Can the same objective be reached more effectively through a team app? Most of the time the answer is yes.
A digital workplace saves money by replacing meetings that don’t require face to face time. People can participate and collaborate without disrupting what they’re working on. It’s the next wave of technology that’s creating a more efficient world and changing how people work.
