Meeting fatigue: How to avoid workplace drain on energy and time

Think you attend too many work meetings? You’re not alone. Meeting fatigue has gotten so bad some companies such as Marin County’s Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical hired a consultant to determine how it could be more efficient with these mandatory gatherings.

Ultragenyx has the added issue of being a global company, so not everyone is in the same time zone. About seven years ago it brought in the company Stop Meeting Like This to assess how it could better manage things.

“We wanted to make sure we were optimizing time in meetings and that they were the best use of everyone’s time,” said Bria Martin, vice president of culture and organizational strategy for the Novato biopharmaceutical company. ”If I end early, I call it giving you the gift of time back.”

Meetings are such a problem that Steven Rogelberg wrote a book titled “The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead your Team to Peak Performance.”

“Anyone about to hit send on a meeting invite needs to ask themselves two questions: One, does the meeting have a compelling purpose? And two, does that meeting require active collaboration?” said Rogelberg, a meetings expert and professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. “If the answer is ‘yes’ to both, hit send. If not, stop, think it through and determine if there is actually a need to meet or if another form of communication is sufficient,” such as a phone call, email or instant message.

In a 2022 report by Rogelberg and Otter.ai titled “The Cost of Unnecessary Meeting Attendance,” it was revealed that workers average nearly 18 meetings a week, with each one lasting about an hour.

Different philosophies

One of the first things Mark Behl did last fall when he became president and CEO of Fairfield-based NorthBay Health was to create a no-meeting zone. Managers are discouraged from scheduling formal meetings at defined times throughout the week and instead are encouraged to have more meaningful interactions with staff members.

“While NorthBay Health is not mandating a reduction in the number of meetings employees attend, it is actively encouraging managers to connect with employees where the work is being done one hour a day, Monday through Friday,” spokesperson Diane Barney said.

Behl is also cracking down on endless streams of emails that can take people away from their actual work. In January, he launched what’s called a “TOP 3 email” that goes out weekly.

“We tell our employees that we know they’re busy, so if they only have time to read one email, to make it the TOP 3 for the week,” Behl said. “It helps everyone to know which priorities we’re embracing, and what important events, challenges and opportunities are on the horizon.”

Like NorthBay Health, Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn and Spa requires meetings across an array of specialties and at different times of the day and night.

In-person meetings are what the Sonoma hotelier finds to be most effective. While the number of them has not decreased of late, who has to attend them has evolved — as in fewer people.

“Teams are more cognizant of running shorter, more impactful sessions,” spokesperson Michelle Heston said.

Make it actionable

Ultragenyx has set up what it calls “meeting bands“ so people know what time is a good time for people to convene in the various locations where it has offices. This way meetings are not scheduled outside of normal business hours.

“We really made it a goal for everyone to save 45 minutes to an hour each day by having more productive meetings,” Martin said.

This is done by sending out clear agendas prior to gathering, having meetings driven by action and ending with action items.

Ultragenyx also has built in a cushion between meetings so people have time to decompress and reflect on what was said in the initial forum.

The company, through the outside audit, also came up with ways people could get out of meetings without repercussions.

“We gave scripts out about how to get out of meetings or to seek clarity of the purpose of the meeting,” Martin said. “People may ask, ‘What do you want my role to be?’ and ‘How long (can I) expect to be there?’”

It's about empowering people to have control over their time.

When it comes to off-site meetings, Martin says it’s important to have reasonable start times, schedule breaks, end at 4:30 p.m. and hold off on dinner until 6 p.m. or later so people have time for themselves.

Numbers tell a story

Even though Microsoft has one of the larger virtual-meeting platforms — Microsoft Teams — it recognizes meetings are a huge bugaboo for many employees.

Among the software giant’s findings in a paper released last year was that inefficient meetings were reported as the No. 1 productivity disruptor, followed by too many meetings.

In a 2022 paper, Microsoft found that overlapping meetings had increased by 46% per person from the prior year. And, in an average week, 42% of respondents said they multitask during meetings, including actively sending an email or ping.

Enterprise work management platform Asana reported in August on an internal experiment where recurring meetings were eliminated. Then organizers had to decide what to add back to the calendar.

“As a result, meeting lengths shrunk and each person saved an average of 11 hours per month,” said spokesperson Hannah Lee.

Strategize for efficiency

Golbou Ghassemieh, operations manager and senior consultant with The Personnel Perspective in Santa Rosa, said it’s important to ask, “Do you need everyone or is it better to talk to people individually, or clarify to people who were not included?”

Ghassemieh said people need to be included in the right meetings for the right reasons, not because they have a fear of missing out. In other words, it’s not appropriate to include everyone, every time. She said you don’t want people walking away frustrated, feeling like management isn’t respectful of their time.

“Oftentimes for leaders it can be a shortcut to pull everyone into meetings,” Ghassemieh said. ”But it's not necessarily being most effective in using their time.”

Rogelberg, the meetings expert, echoes that sentiment.

“My research shows that those leaders and organizations that basically prioritize everything as being important, have way more meetings than those orgs that are more careful with prioritization, picking and choosing more strategically,” Rogelberg said. “Reducing meetings without reducing priorities can have unintended consequences as meetings are still central to employee involvement, building relationships and inclusion. Given this, while I am a fan of a meeting diet that is principled, my preference is to make meetings more effective, shorter and leaner as mechanisms to give time back.”