Elon Musk is not a fan of working from home, but when it comes to meetings, you will like his opinion. In 2018, an email written by the Tesla boss to his employees leaked, according to the BBC. In this e-mail, he would have given a list of tips to increase the productivity of the company.
“It’s not rude to leave”
And among those recommendations, he asked employees to avoid unnecessary meetings. Calling excessive meetings a “plague” on big business, Musk reportedly urged avoiding all big meetings unless they bring value to everyone in attendance.
“Walk out of a meeting or drop a call as soon as it’s obvious you’re not adding value. It’s not rude to leave, it’s rude to make someone stay and waste their time”he would also have written.
New study proves Tesla boss right
Four years later, a study published by Otter.ai and Dr. Steven Rogelberg (professor of organizational sciences, management and psychology at the University of North Carolina) proves Musk right. They have just published a study concerning the meetings.
According to the results of this American study, a third of the meetings are useless. In addition to wasting employees’ time, it would also be wasting companies’ money. Indeed, Otter.ai’s calculations estimate that companies lose an average of $25,000 per employee per year for meetings that serve no purpose.
The company, which offers an innovative solution for meeting transcription, recommends that organizations optimize meeting attendance. But while ensuring that notes from these meetings are shared with employees.
You are there, but not there
For his part, Dr. Steven Rogelberg evokes a norm within organizations that makes an employee feel obliged to attend a meeting even when he considers that it is useless.
“When employees are in meetings they don’t need to be in, they’re often just sitting there disengaged or multitasking, which distracts others and can derail the meeting,” he said. . He points to a lack of communication on this subject.
The study also shows that 71% of employees would have the possibility of not attending these meetings deemed unnecessary if they had the possibility of consulting the notes in due time. To obtain these results, 632 volunteers were interviewed, 47% of whom were working 100% from home.