Since the pandemic, many office workers have had constant meetings. So many that the actual work is left undone and has to be made up for. We’ll show you how to get out of there.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the frequency of meetings has increased rapidly, especially among people who work from home. Where previously there was only one customer appointment a day, there are now four to five or more in the calendar, says Annina Hering, labor market expert at the job portal Indeed.
There is no question that employees no longer get to the substantive part of their job at all. However, Hering advises dedicating at least 20 to 30 percent of the working time per day to your own work – preferably in longer units in a row. How professionals create meeting-free zones themselves.
Method 1: Block non-meeting times
Anyone who longs for times when there are no meetings should reserve appropriate time slots for focus work in the calendar. Ideally, you put the focus stages on times when you are most productive. It is helpful to use the status line in collaboration tools such as Slack to signal: “I don’t want to be disturbed at the moment.” It is best to turn off all push notifications at the same time.
2. Method: Check statistics
Tools like Google Meet , Teams or Zoom can show us how much time we spend in meetings on average. Hering advises using this data and analyzing your own meeting culture based on it. When the load is high, you need to take countermeasures. Objective numbers are also a good basis in appraisals to point out that meeting times are getting out of hand.
3rd method: say no
“It’s important to just say no sometimes,” says Hering. “We often accept meeting invitations submissively without questioning them.” There are quite a few meetings where your own presence is only optional. The labor market expert advises: be consistent and cancel.
4th method: enforce non-meeting days
Even if employees cannot influence this company-wide – “meeting-free days can also be enforced at team level,” says Hering. The duration of meetings can also be clearly limited. “Some companies are not allowed to have meetings that last longer than half an hour.”
5th method: Reconsider meeting frequency
Hering recommends questioning recurring appointments carefully. Maybe it’s enough to have the weekly team meeting every 14 days? If the appointment is often spontaneously postponed or canceled anyway, this is an indication that it is less important anyway.
It may also be more sensible and effective to hold a half-day workshop every month than to hold a weekly status meeting, “where you can never go into depth anyway,” says Hering. In this way everyone creates more space in their calendars.
