Some meetings aren’t necessary – here’s what you can do instead

If you want to be more productive at work, you can either put in more hours at the office or use the time you already have more efficiently. But that can be difficult when half your day is taken up by unnecessary meetings.

Meetings are some of the most time-consuming parts of your workday, and unfortunately, you can’t get that time back. Every minute spent in a meeting meandering off-topic and waiting for latecomers is a minute taken away from essential work you could be doing instead. In research conducted by Harvard, 182 senior managers were surveyed on their experiences with meetings. 65% said that meetings keep them from completing work and 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient. Imagine if 71% of senior management at your company called their teams’ independent work unproductive and inefficient — you would find ways to address the issues and boost productivity.

That’s not the only reason why meetings get a bad rap. As University of North Carolina at Charlotte Management Professor Steven Rogelberg states, “a meeting is taking you out of your workflow…and asking you to do something else that you might not want to do. That puts you in a bad mental state.” People who are in a negative mindset are not as open-minded or creative, which is not the greatest mindset for a team meeting. 

But meetings still exist, even the seemingly pointless ones. That’s because meetings are the traditional grounds where teams sync and align on goals, define strategies, learn new workflows, and get department updates. A lot of meetings are used simply for keeping teams in check with each other and fostering good relationships. These are all important things to cover, but do they have to take place in an hour-long meeting each week?

Imagine cutting a meeting (or two) each week. Think of all you could get done with that extra time on your calendar. With Prezi Video, you can hold meetings asynchronously instead of scheduling a meeting in-person or online. Create a video with all the content you would typically cover in a meeting, and because you and your content are on screen at the same time, you’ll keep that face-to-face connection that makes in-person meetings so valuable. Your team will still get the information they need, and you’ll be able to avoid any distractions and timing issues that slow down a regularly scheduled meeting.

Take Kinga’s video for example. She replaces a training session with a short step-by-step guide to setting SMART goals. Watch her video here or go to the video page to make a copy and reuse it for your own asynchronous training session.

Don’t waste any more time in meetings – it’s time to boost productivity in your workplace. Try replacing your inefficient meetings with Prezi Video today.