A quick Google search yields a plethora of alarming statistics related to the cost of unproductive meetings. A few stats:

There are approximately 55 million meetings daily and at least half do not accomplish much (Forbes, 2019)
Organizations spend roughly 15% of their time on meetings, and 71% of participants consider these meetings unproductive (Zippia, 2023)
An estimated $37 billion is wasted on unproductive meetings (Zippia, 2023)
Average meeting time varies by job title with CEOs spending 72% of their time in meetings, middle management about 35% and upper management about 50% (Zippia, 2023)
The average delay per meeting for employees is 10 minutes 40 seconds which equates to 3 days and 2 hours per year. The average delay per meeting for senior executives is 15 minutes and 42 seconds which equates to 5 days and 19 hours per year of wasted time. (Cross River Therapy, 2023)
55% of employees multitask in meetings (Zippia, 2023)
Only 37% of work meetings have an agenda and use it (Zippia, 2023)

It becomes evident quite quickly that poor meeting management could be causing your organization to lose a significant amount of money.

Have you ever calculated the cost of a meeting?

You can do this at a basic level by multiplying:

Number of participants
Average hourly salary
Length of meeting

For example, in a two hour meeting with 5 people who make an average $35/hour, the meeting cost would be $350. This does not take into account, lost productivity for other projects, transportation or overhead costs.

To truly understand the return on investment, look at the results that come out of the meeting and ask yourself if you would pay $350 for them? If the answer is no, then you need to make a change.

Inefficient Meeting Practices Impacting ROI

Highly Paid Participants

Including executives, consultants or highly paid individuals increases the cost of meetings.

Duration

The longer the meeting, the greater the cost. Often meetings are booked in 30 minute increments and extra time is added “just in case” which makes it easier to extend meetings or waste time.

Number of Attendees

The more attendees, the greater the cost. Sometimes, the net is cast wide in terms of meeting invitations, without critical thought to who actually needs to be in the meeting.

Frequency

The more often meetings are held, the higher the cost. Often meeting cadence is set, but not reevaluated, so those meetings that needed to be weekly early in the project could move to bi-weekly. Rethinking the necessity of meetings isn’t part of our regular practice.

Inefficient Processes

Crappy meetings cost money because they don’t achieve the necessary objectives. Process challenges including starting late, running over time, not having an agenda, not having clear objectives, no meeting facilitator. These last few cause discussion to veer off track and distract from what needs to be accomplished.

Travel Expenses

If attendees are from out of town, the obvious travel, food and accommodation expenses add to the cost. Often, however, travel to the meeting site is often ignored for local attendees if the meeting is not where they regularly work (eg. A client site, or at an office and they work remotely).

Opportunity

When you are in a meeting, you can not work on other projects which is missed opportunity. For organizations with billable employees, this can mean a decrease in revenue.

Lack of Preparation

Running an effective and efficient meeting takes preparation and skill, however, many meeting facilitators lack the skills (because they haven’t been taught) or they don’t prepare for the meeting (no agenda and clear meeting objectives defined and shared).

The Cost is Greater than the Monetary Cost

Reflect on a poor meeting that you’ve attended; what words come to mind?

I often hear: waste of time, frustrating, demotivating or stressful used. If your employees spend a considerable amount of time in meetings, and subsequently experience these emotions, morale and motivation are adversely affected.

In a tight labour market where it is harder to find employees, you want to ensure you are keeping your great people. They want meaningful work, and improving your meetings can transform those negative feelings.

Motivated individuals tend to work harder and are more willing to step up and do what needs to be done.

So, an ineffective $350 meeting really has a greater cost than just the money spent, and an effective $350 meeting has the opposite effect.

Strategies for Maximizing Meeting ROI

Calculate Meeting Costs

Do not spend hours doing this. You do not need an exact value, but ballpark the cost of each meeting in your organization (or that you attend). Evaluate the results coming out of each meeting and ask yourself: “Would I spend $x to buy that result?” If the answer is yes, keep going. If it’s no, then look at whether you need the meeting, how you can get the results for the cost, or how to reduce the cost.

Create Agendas for Every Meeting

You do not need complicated agendas for each meeting, however, you need to ensure there are clear objectives for every meeting. An agenda could be as simple as: brainstorm solutions to x problem. With that objective identified, each participants knows the purpose of the meeting, and can identify if it goes off track. Meetings with more than one objective, should have an agenda with the times allocated.

Identifying times on an agenda (especially for meetings greater than 30 minutes) helps each participant recognize the importance of each item. For example, if an agenda has 3 topics: choose date for this project, identify key individuals, and brainstorm possible solutions, it is critical to understand how long to spend on each topic. For these three, perhaps choose date is 5 minutes, identify key individuals is 10 minutes and the remainder can be focused on brainstorming, which is likely the most important portion of the meeting. Often, we get caught up in the short items and run out of time for the more important ones.

Improve Processes

Each meeting needs to have a leader or facilitator; it does not need to be a manager, but someone who is willing to track speaking order, watch the time, identify if conversation is getting off topic, start and end the meeting.

Without a facilitator, meetings will often start late as it is unclear who is in charge, which is a waste of time and money.

In virtual meetings, the hands up feature is great to ensure smooth transition between speakers without that awkwardness that often happens. For in person meetings, have people raise their hand and the facilitator can note the order. This process ensures each person has the opportunity to speak (even the quieter, reserved participants) and that the discussion is not dominated by a few people.

Start every meeting on time; even if not all the participants are there. By starting late, you disrespect people who arrived on time, and teach everyone that they don’t need to come on time, as you’ll wait. Walking into an in progress meeting late generally cures the habit of simply coming late.

Look at meeting duration and determine if meetings can be shortened. Meetings are typically booked for 30 minute increments, since that’s the default in our calendars. Challenge that. If you only need 15 minutes, book that. Keeping meeting duration tight helps keep participants focused (especially when they know the objectives and understand what needs to be accomplished).

evaluate Attendees

Examine each meeting to ensure that every participant is required. For recurring meetings, the attendee list is often defaulted to a standard list. The meeting facilitator should reflect for each iteration of that meeting, whether anyone is not needed and adjust the meeting invite accordingly. Having an agenda and clear objectives makes this easier.

Training on Meeting Management

Expecting excellent meetings when people lack the skills (because they’ve never been taught, and likely haven’t seen them modelled) is futile. Invest in training, coaching and feedback to improve meetings.

Evaluate Meetings

Block 5 minutes at the end of each meeting to review action items, decisions and to rate the meeting. Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System asks participants to rate each L10 meeting. While he uses a 1-10 scale, I suggest making it simpler and using a 1 – 4 scale (1 = awful, 2 = OK, 3 = pretty good, 4 = kick-ass). For a rating of 1 or 2, ask what went wrong or how to improve. Aim for 3s and 4s as ratings. If you consistently get 3s, ask what would make the meeting a 4?

The scale is not crucial; what matters is seeking feedback on the meeting and identifying areas for improvement. Many individuals tend to focus on the scale, but the primary goals are feedback and continuous improvement.

Next Steps

I’d love to hear about your meeting frustrations, so email me and let me know.
Sign up for my free Leadership Toolbox, to learn more about meeting management and gain access to videos, PDF resources and curated blog posts.
Invest in meeting management training (Reach out to me as I offer this training). Check my Services page (coming soon) for available options.
Evaluate the ROI for the meetings in your organization. If that is overwhelming, start with one meeting.
Share this blog post with your organization

Choose 1 thing to improve with your meetings and embed it as a practice in your organization (don’t try to do it all; it’s overwhelming and you will give up – learn more).

Maximizing Meeting ROI: A Strategic Guide for Effective Meetings