As COVID-19 has prompted many employers to shift staff to remote work, recurring meetings that were formerly held in a designated conference room or office have also been reformatted for online or phone-based settings.
And just as moving from one home to another is a great time to get rid of unneeded furniture and other household items, transitioning business operations is a great time to get rid of unneeded processes and meetings.
In this post, we revisit some tips for identifying unnecessary meetings that are wasting your staff’s time.
Evaluate Previous Attendance
Has a meeting historically been poorly attended or had disruptive late arrivals? One sure sign a meeting isn’t valuable to staff is when they schedule over or skip it when faced with a conflict.
Can the Objective Be Met via E-Mail?
If a meeting is primarily used to provide updates, one option is to replace it with an e-mail update. It makes sense to keep update meetings that often spur significant follow-up questions and discussions in person. Others that simply involve the host presenting updates to a silent audience can easily be replaced by an e-mail.
What Has the Past Impact Been of NOT Holding a Meeting?
This is a great question to ask during the COVID-19-triggered transition to remote work. During the transition, the frequency of recurring meetings may have been reduced as part of the shuffle. Did this cause any major issues? If not, it’s a sign the live meeting was not critical.
Has It Been a Struggle to Fill Time in the Meeting?
Some meeting hosts agonize over how to fill a 30-minute or 1-hour block of time for a recurring meeting without recognizing the lack of content as a sign the meeting is unnecessary.
It’s no secret that most organizations waste a lot of time with unnecessary meetings. The challenge is sometimes identifying which ones need to stay and which ones need to go. An abrupt transition to remote work is a great opportunity to do some housecleaning and identify meetings your company can live without.