Why Meetings Can Harm Employee Well-Being (phys.org)
- Reference: 0180326681
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/08/0132210/why-meetings-can-harm-employee-well-being
- Source link: https://phys.org/news/2025-12-employee.html
> On average, managers [3]spend 23 hours a week in meetings . Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The [4]paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings... in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones...
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> A 2015 [5]handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the [6]research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce... Faced with what we call meeting madness , the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting...?
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> The goal should not be to have fewer meetings, but better ones. Meetings that respect everyone's time and energy. Meetings that give a voice to all. Meetings that build connection.
Slashdot reader [7]ShimoNoSeki shares [8]an obligatory XKCD comic ...
[1] https://phys.org/news/2025-12-employee.html
[2] https://theconversation.com/why-meetings-can-harm-employee-well-being-270899
[3] https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-the-meeting-madness
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681323001167
[5] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-meeting-science/BF8D238A6062347DC177731365760380
[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681323001167
[7] https://www.slashdot.org/~ShimoNoSeki
[8] https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/is_it_worth_the_time.png
Clear Agenda (Score:3)
I talked with someone who had a firm principal at work: If the meeting didn't have a clear agenda explaining its purpose and what it would be covering (usually emailed around beforehand), he wouldn't go to it. If the organisers didn't put in the work to clearly communicate what the meeting intended to achieve, then the meeting was not worth the time he'd spend attending it.
no... (Score:2)
The solution is to get rid of the managers, they're only having so many meetings to try justify their useless existence anyway. We got rid of our managers a year ago and productivity is like 3x what it was when we had them trying to put their stamp on everything and screwing everything up.
Re: (Score:2)
No managers, huh? How does that work when two people disagree, and can't come to an agreement? Who makes decisions about who to hire? Who decides when it's time to let somebody go, and who carries out that unpleasant task? Who decides what projects are higher priority? Who reins in executives who want everything right now? Who do you go to when you want to talk about your next pay raise?
You might have gotten rid of your managers, but I'll bet somebody is still doing all these tasks. In other words, somebody
Limit to Seven People (Score:3)
I recall reading that if you have a meeting with more than seven people, you are probably having an ineffective meeting. I am regularly forced to attend meetings with 20-30 people. It's always the same 3-4 people who speak, everyone else remains silent.
I think about the many thousands of man-hours wasted during these meetings throughout the year, and the salary that costs, when I hear a PHB stating that new hardware, software, training, or personnel just aren't in the budget.
Better meeting engineering (Score:2)
I used to schedule our weekly meetings where everyone had to stand and started it 30 minutes before lunch. It stuck to important business only and rarely went over.
ALL Meetings (Score:2)
Should be held without chairs.
Fixed that for ya'
Re: (Score:3)
There are some ingenious managers who will drag out a meeting, with or without chairs!
Simple solution (Score:2)
Back in the aughts, I wrote an Outlook (ugh) plugin to prominently display the cost of a meeting based on the length of the meeting and the midpoints of the salary bands of all participants. I did the same for emails based on the length of the email and again the salary bands of all recipients.
Problems of pointless meetings and emails with half the company in CC disappeared almost overnight.
The dissipated responsibility model (Score:2)
Most problems can be solved by speaking to the SME or stakeholder directly, without involving more people. DM or a quick call. That's all it takes. Why would you need a scheduled meeting with irrelevant, overly-opinionated audience to agree on something that takes 5 minutes to decide? Are you afraid of making a judgement call yourself and are you trying to dissipate the responsibility instead? Don't they pay you to do the actual work?
Does this need to be a meeting? (Score:2)
The first thing to do is ask "Does this need to be a meeting?". If all you're doing is disseminating information, it doesn't. Send the information in an email instead. If you expect questions, send it in an email and have people ask their questions via an email thread. If you start getting debate on a question, then you need to schedule a meeting or take it to real-time chat. If you want feedback and expect debate on changes, send it in an email and schedule a meeting later to give people enough time to und
Re: (Score:2)
Not everyone is good at absorbing written material. For that matter, not everyone is good at writing informative emails. Often, the conversation *is* the thing that has value.
Re: (Score:1)
Many people don't actually read emails. I sympathize with people who hate meetings, and I admit many are unnecessary. But acquiring information from other places in the company is an essential part of most jobs, even if you don't want to. Half of the problem with many meetings isn't that they're not needed, but that the participants wish they didn't have to do that part of their jobs, and instead would rather be doing a different thing.
I need to coordinate with my peers (Score:2)
I don't necessarily need a manager present to do this. I'm a big boy and can schedule a meeting and politely invite the small number of people it takes to coordinate.
Don't show up to bad meetings (Score:2)
I'm a lead programmer in the games industry, and I did not show up to meetings with low value. But that said, 50% of my time was spent on meetings and managerial duties.
Critically, I consider it my job to go to meetings so the other programmers on my team DON'T. We need to talk about the state of the game. We need to discuss mechanics and timelines and all sorts of things. But I don't want other programmers in more than a few hours of meetings a week, and most of those meeting hours should be just in our te
So (Score:3)
Half the work of managers is of low quality or low value. Who saw that coming?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not even a manager and there are, at present count, 30 hours of meetings on my calendar. I go to less than half, I just let the meetings sandbag my calendar so that new meetings are difficult to schedule. Either you know me and we have a reason to meet, or fuck you.
The actual managers are much worse off. Corporate life is stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
It all depends on the manager. A good manager (and good managers do exist) will find ways to use their time wisely, they will limit their time in meetings, and the meetings they do attend or run, will be productive.
Re: (Score:2)
With the other half being of negative worth? Color me non-surprised.