Work meetings are not necessarily meant to be enjoyable, but they should be concise affairs with clearly stated goals and clear communication. Too often, especially when departments begin to silo, redundant and ineffective meetings being to clutter an employee’s workday – and that means leans productivity. We asked employees to answer the question, “Are your company’s meetings effective?” Sadly, the collected data tells us that a far too large percentage of employees feel like their company’s meetings are not fruitful.
This info comes from the latest reading of an ongoing study by Comparably. Over 10,000 employees responded to the question.
45% of all employees say no, their company’s meetings aren’t effective. Male and female responses were very much in line with each other.
When responses are divided up by the ethnicity of the respondent, we see very similar numbers. This implies that ineffective meetings are a profound issue affecting all employees and cultures.
When those same responses are divided up by age group, we see early optimism giving way to a more standardized complaint. 60% of Gen Z employees (18-25) can vouch for their company’s meetings as effective, but by the next age bracket (26-30) that number has dropped to match the overall average from all employees. It stays at that level for all age groups, rising again for those presumably nearing the end of their careers.
A similar downward trend is visible when we look at responses broken up by work experience. Again, employees new to the workforce are generally more positive about the company meetings they attend. And again, that number drops steadily until the 6 to 10 years group, where it bottoms out a full ten points lower than the average for entry-level employees. What’s unclear is the place accrued cynicism has in this: Do workers simply get tired of meetings, or begin to assume they are ineffective based on a negative attitude towards their bosses (which is common)?
When looked at by department, we see a very familiar result: Executives and HR employees are especially positive about their company’s way of doing business, even when the questions are posed anonymously. And there’s more familiarity at the bottom, with less public-facing employees from IT and Operations much cooler on the effectiveness of meetings.
There are some clear differences on this issue when departmental responses are broken up by gender. Female employees in Admin, Customer Support, Operations, and the C-suite are more positive than their male counterparts. Conversely, males in Finance, IT, and Product are more positive than the women in those departments.
Latest reading as of Nov 17.
