The Surprising Impact of Meeting - Free Days

Many organizations try non-meeting days, but they must argue to find the optimal weekly balance. Even before the pandemic, about 71% of executives thought meetings were inefficient and costly. As many companies move to remote and hybrid workplace models, the length and frequency of meetings have increased steadily to compensate for the loss of face-to-face interactionToday's knowledgeable workers typically waste more than 85 % of their time in meetings, which, according to research, negatively impacts on people's psychological, physical and mental health. While building trust and achieving team cohesion relies on frequent and quality interactions, meetings are no longer the best way to achieve thisAs a result, many large companies such as Atlassian and Facebook are also embracing non-meeting days, where people perform better when they work at their own rhythm, while also collaborating with others at an appropriate pace and on schedule.

Assessing the Effects of No-Meeting Days

 

According to a study done, nearly half (47%) of companies surveyed did not hold two meetings a week, reducing meetings by 40%. The remaining companies tried a more unusual method: About 35% did not meet for three days and 11% implemented it for four days. The remaining 7% eliminated the meeting application. The after-effect of introducing meeting-free days was profound. When a non-meeting day a week was started, positive improvements were observed in all aspects such as communication, autonomy, participation and job satisfaction, and stress and micromanagement were reduced. Thus, productivity increased.

In this research, 76 large companies were examined. These companies were companies with more than 1,000 employees, operating in more than 50 countries, and using non-meeting days ranging from 1 to 5 days a week (including one-on-one meetings) in the last 12 months. The managers and the HR director were interviewed to understand the managerial perspectives. Before and after the meetings did not decrease, the data showing the stress levels of the employees were examined, and pulse surveys were conducted to evaluate the developments in areas such as cooperation, productivity and participation.