5 tips to avoid falling into acute meetingitis

What is acute meetingitis?

Acute meetingitis is an ailment that is affecting more and more companies. But what does it exactly refer to?

Definition of acute meetingitis

Acute meetingitis refers to the systematic organization of work meetings that are not essential. It can involve hour-long meetings that could have been completed in 15 minutes, meetings without agendas, or meetings where nobody listens and everyone is glued to their computers.

For many executives, meetings make up a significant part of their schedule. They are numerous, often recurring, not always necessary, and frequently counterproductive. Moreover, with the normalization of video meetings, the additional strain of video fatigue comes into play. So, how can we avoid this time-consuming and exhausting phenomenon for employees? And how can we regain productivity?

Acute meeting overload in numbers

According to a study on the anatomy of work conducted by the American team communication management application Asana, 129 hours per year are devoted to unproductive meetings.

In addition to being avoidable, and even unnecessary, these meetings cause teams to fall behind. Indeed, 24% of employees surveyed believe that the proliferation of meetings leads to delays in their productivity. Faced with back-to-back meetings on their schedules, 1 in 2 employees admit to multitasking during meetings. This highlights the fact that there are too many meetings, the presence of certain individuals is not necessarily essential, and these appointments sometimes result in a waste of time.

Also worth discovering: The 4 keys to work performance.

Our 5 tips to avoid acute meeting overload

Counterproductive, time-consuming, exhausting, and delay-inducing: unnecessary meetings must be avoided, and those that do take place should be prepared for. Here are our tips to prevent acute meeting overload.

Addressing specific issues

Regular meetings can be a trap. While some meetings are necessary to gain insight into production, debrief, or brainstorm, others that occur regularly can prove to be pointless. To address this, it is important to avoid scheduling meetings automatically.

A meeting should serve a specific purpose. Therefore, it is unnecessary to gather every Monday or Thursday if it is not needed, there are no urgent topics to discuss, or there are no decisions that require team mobilization. It is better to skip an unnecessary meeting and allow employees to focus on their tasks. This will be beneficial for everyone's productivity.

Only invite essential individuals

Attending a meeting without being an active participant is frustrating and a waste of time for the employees. For businesses, it is also a loss because it affects employee productivity. To determine the essential people for a meeting, you only need to answer these two questions:

- Is the person involved in the subject of the meeting?

- Can the collaborator make decisions regarding the discussed topic?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then the presence of that collaborator is justified.

Allow time for everyone to prepare for the meeting

To make the meeting as efficient as possible, it is advisable to communicate the purpose of the meeting to the participants several days in advance. Be as precise as possible in the invitation or email. This way, all participants will have the same level of information on the D-day, but more importantly, they will have time to reflect on the subject and formulate proposals.

Being proactive

The meeting organizer should be able to propose, prior to the meeting, ideas for reflection or even solutions to the issues that will be addressed. The goal is to make the meeting more seamless and effective. Therefore, when faced with proposed solutions, participants only need to validate one of the options or suggest alternatives.

Creating a meeting summary

At the beginning of each meeting, it is important to designate a responsible person to take notes and create a summary. To ensure an effective meeting, it is essential to record the important points discussed, decisions made, and work strategies mentioned that need to be progressed upon.

The meeting summary can also include assigning responsibilities for each task and scheduling the next progress update for each project. The summary also serves as a recap of the meeting that can be shared with absentees or individuals whose presence may not have been essential.

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