Why meetings matter more than you think

According to a new study, meetings are the “broccoli of work” — widely disliked, but probably good for us anyway

PARTLY DUE TO cultural shifts and partly due to a shifting beliefs about productivity and focus, we have found ourselves in a state of what you might call calendar bankruptcy: meetings are viewed skeptically as time-wasting; offices regularly schedule no-meeting days and there’s a cultural reflex towards “that could have been an email.”

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But a new study of Norwegian workplace data took a closer look at the role and function of meetings in the modern workplace, and came to a conclusion that might be surprising, as it cuts against what has become common wisdom in the modern workplace: meetings are good for you.

“Meetings are the broccoli of work,” the study states. “Widely disliked, but probably good for us anyway.”

Few workplace functions are as derided as the meeting. The researchers open their paper quoting John Galbraith, who said in the 1960s that “meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” But their research found the exact opposite — that on the individual worker level, meetings “are the single strongest predictor of wage growth,” adding that “time spent in meetings contributes substantially more explanatory power than concentrated individual work, administrative tasks, training, travel, email or other observed workplace activities.”

In fact, when the researchers controlled for all other workday activities, the only thing that set people apart seemed to be meetings. “Meeting time remains the only positive and statistically significant predictor of wage-rank growth,” the researchers wrote.

There’s an apparent mismatch here between the perception of meetings’ value and the actual reality of meetings’ value. A Korn Ferry report this month found that 45 per cent of employees globally said they were “too busy” to work effectively, a sentiment that often puts meetings in the crosshairs (since, what faster way to feel a bit less busy than to clear meetings from the calendar). Other papers suggest there might be an upper ceiling for productive meeting time at around two hours per day — more, it should be said, than the 4.7 hours per week that the Norwegian workers studied were spending.

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The paper is careful to say that it had found a correlation between time spent in meetings and wage growth, and that attributing causation could be tricky. (It’s worth noting that the study was done exclusively on Norwegian workplace data, so workplace cultural differences will play some role here.) Researchers speculate that communication between senior and junior employees could be a factor, or that workers are self-selecting to some degree. “Workers with higher ability, greater ambition or more complex responsibilities may sort into meeting-intensive jobs and firms,” the researchers wrote.

The takeaway for both sides might be to realize that meetings aren’t necessarily wasted time, even if they are annoying. For managers, cutting down on meeting time may save money on paper, but it comes at a cost; for workers, cutting down on meeting time may feel more productive in the short term, as it relieves calendar pressure, but may be harming wage growth in the long run.

“Meetings are the cost we have to pay to coordinate complex collective action within the firm,” said David J. Deming, a co-author of the paper. “So if you only ask people about the cost, and not the benefit, you will get a misleading picture of the value of meetings.” Kieran Delamont