Business meetings at least have one benefit: for that part of the day, they allow you to avoid doing actual work that requires you to bask in the LCD glow from staring at your computer screen all day and thus slowly immolating your brain and vision.

Then again, they're BUSINESS MEETINGS!

In the average workplace, of course, there are many meetings. In fact, the average number of meetings more than doubled in the second half of the 20th century. And time spent in meetings only continues to grow.

But just how effective are business meetings? You sit in a group and listen to the boss pontificate and propose and assign — and the meetings are loooong — and by the end, is anything really ever decided or developed or altogether accomplished? Indeed, unnecessary or unproductive meetings have been calculated to cost managers 10 percent of their time — or, 24 workdays a year. Moreover, a study by Microsoft in 2004 suggested that unnecessary meetings are the No. 1 drain on the productivity of small businesses.

But never mind the effectiveness of meetings. How about the effects of meeting time on employees' well-being?

Much has been written about the many job-related factors that affect employee well-being: from office atmosphere to management style to organizational structure. Now a new study addresses the effects and implications of meeting time on morale and productivity.

The recent report, authored by a team of researchers led by psychologist Steven Rogelberg from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, describes the first international scientific study ever performed on the topic and is based on the responses of 980 employees to two work surveys.

One surprising finding is that more people actually view meetings as a positive part of the workday than will admit to that fact publicly. "It is socially unacceptable to talk about liking meetings, unless someone else starts talking about it," Rogelberg says. In other words, everybody claims to hate meetings because it is the only view that is socially acceptable in public. Yet there they are in an overwhelming mass: workers who secretly love meetings, the psychologist reports.

Perhaps more surprising, however, is that the meeting-lovers typically are the workers who are less driven to finish the job at hand, as meetings give them both something to do other than their actual work and a pleasant social break in the day.

Meanwhile, staff members who are pushing to get things done are frustrated with meeting after meeting after meeting...etc., etc. These people tend to be your better employees: very task-focused, goal-focused and striving toward accomplishment. They view meetings only as tasks — or barriers — getting in the way of the day's progress. "And we did find that the more meetings [a company] was having, the more intent [those 'better' employees] had to leave the organization," Rogelberg notes.

Simply put, participants scoring low on the accomplishment striving scale are positively impacted by meetings, while those scoring high are negatively impacted by meetings, particularly when they are frequent.

The study further reveals that the effects of meetings on employee well-being is "moderated" by three factors:

• Whether jobs specifically require group work;
• Whether the meetings are run efficiently; and
• Where the employee falls on the personality scale of "accomplishment striving."

"If one of every two meetings you're going to is not being seen as a good use of your time, that's high," Rogelberg says. Still, staff will rebel and business will go badly if the boss cuts out meetings completely.

So, what can managers do to strike a balance? Rogelberg recommends managers consider and settle three key points: 1) Be sure that a particular meeting is necessary; 2) Try to have it with fewer people; and 3) Run it efficiently.

Regarding the lattermost point, you do not want some loudmouth dominating the conversation, as everyone involved should be heard in a timely manner.

Consider these points, Rogelberg says, and the high-performing workers won't mind being there as much. Plus, all meetings theretofore will not be eliminated and your workers who are low in accomplishment striving will have their precious little actual-work avoidances.

Of course, if you dislike business meetings and the blamestorming and testiculating that comprise them, there almost always is the opportunity for a competitive game of, ahem, "BS Bingo."

Sources

Like meetings? Chances are you've got nothing better to do
by Tom Spears
The Ottawa Citizen, March 1, 2006

Meetings take a subtle toll
Management Issues News, Feb. 27, 2006

Some won`t admit to liking office meetings
Monsters & Critics, Feb. 25, 2006