Why meetings can harm employee well

Every meeting should start with a simple question: why are we meeting? Dotshock/Shutterstock

Anyone working in an organisation knows it: meetings follow one after another at a frantic pace. On average, managers 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 paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings… in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones.

And yet, for a long time, meetings were not subject of management research. A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of “Meeting Science”. Among other things, the 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.

Meetings either foster well-being or harm it

In our series of studies conducted during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers found that meetings can both foster and harm participants’ well-being. Indeed, participating in too many meetings can lead to burn-out and an intention to quit the organisation; however, meetings can also increase employee engagement.

The widespread adoption of remote work and virtual meetings, accelerated by the pandemic, has introduced new sources of fatigue: cognitive overload, hyperconnection, and lack of separation between work and personal life. But, virtual meetings also enable continuous social interaction and an understanding of an employee’s role in the organization.

Women speak less in videoconferences

These new meeting formats are not experienced equally by everyone.

One of the most striking findings concerns speaking time in virtual meetings. In a survey of hundreds of employees, the results were clear: women reported having more difficulty speaking up in online meetings than in face-to-face ones. Several factors explain this phenomenon: more frequent interruptions, invisibility on shared screens, difficulty reading nonverbal cues, or the double mental load when meetings are held from home.

In other words, virtual meetings – while potentially democratising access – can actually reinforce gender inequalities if care is not taken.

A meeting should be designed, not endured

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?

Based on our series of studies covering thousands of meetings, there are four main types of meeting objectives:

1) sharing information

2) making decisions

3) expressing emotions or opinions

4) building work relationships

Each of these objectives requires meeting participants to do different things, such as seeing faces, hearing intonations, observing reactions, or sharing a screen. And no meeting modality (audio, video, hybrid, in-person) is universally best for all types of objectives. The modality of a meeting should be chosen according to its main objective, rather than habit or technological convenience.

Going further, research identifies simple but powerful levers to improve the collective meeting experience:

share a clear agenda and documents beforehand, so participants feel ready to contribute
use hand-raising tools, anonymous chats, or “round robin” systematic speaking turns
moderate actively – meeting organizers need to balance contributions, encourage participation, and avoid exclusion

Mirrors of organisational culture

Meetings are not neutral. They reflect – often unconsciously – an organization’s culture, power dynamics, and implicit priorities. The data is clear: there are ways to improve meetings. What remains is for companies and managers to acknowledge the transformational power of meetings.

A company where only the loudest voices are heard in meetings is rarely inclusive outside the meeting room. Conversely, well-run meetings can become spaces of co-construction, respect, and collective innovation.

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.

This article was co-authored with Dr. Arnaud Stiepen, expert in science communication.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Willem Standaert, Université de Liège

Willem Standaert ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.