We had a team meeting recently and one of the team was out in the fresh air. Wind howling down the mic. They told him to mute it but shure he couldn’t hear them with the noise.
2 Likes
I thought you didn’t partake in the team calls
Our Indian colleagues were not on this call.
1 Like
Very underwhelming when compared to @Bandages story. No bit of sideboob or anything naw?
Ah I’d only be allowed on internal audio calls. They know well I couldn’t cope getting audio and visual to work at the same time.
Workers Now Spend Two Full Days a Week on Email and in Meetings
New data shows why it can be so hard to get things done
Ray A. SmithUpdated May 9, 2023 at 11:12 am ET
That is one of the findings in new data from Microsoft that examined the activity of millions of workers who use the company’s business applications. The data is part of the software maker’s annual study of workplace-productivity trends, which provides the latest, and one of the largest, measures of how people actually spend their workdays.
Microsoft, along with Google, Slack and Zoom, is among the biggest sellers of workplace-communications tools, and its report puts numbers to the crush of data, emails, meetings and notifications that many people say consumes their time on the joband distracts from actual work.
Advertisement - Scroll to Continue
Researchers found that the 25% most active users of its apps—in other words, people who use Microsoft’s business software for much of their online work activity—spent an average of 8.8 hours a week reading and writing emails and 7.5 hours logging meetings.
Newsletter Sign-up
Careers & Leadership
Get ahead and stay informed about careers, business, management and leadership.
Those figures don’t include time spent instant messaging, on the phone or in other, impromptu conversations with co-workers. In all, the average employee spent 57% of their time using office software for communication—in meetings, email, chat. The remainder of time, 43%, they used for creating things, such as building spreadsheets or writing presentations.
Both workers and bosses complain that digital overload is hurting innovation and productivity, a sentiment echoed in numerous workplace studies. In a separate Microsoft survey of 31,000 people worldwide, nearly two out of three said they struggled to find time and energy to do their actual job. Those people were more than three times as likely as others polled to say innovation and strategic thinking were a challenge for them. (The company didn’t break down how sentiments differed in different countries or industries.)
“People feel quite overwhelmed, a sense of feeling like they have two jobs, the job they were hired to do, but then they have this other job of communicating, coordinating and collaborating,” said Jared Spataro, who leads Microsoft’s modern-work team and who spearheaded the research.
Advertisement - Scroll to Continue
Granted, communicating and going to meetings are a big part of the job for many workers, especially managers. Yet, many workers and bosses say all of the time spent talking and collaborating isn’t necessarily improving workplace communications.
‘People feel quite overwhelmed, a sense of feeling like they have two jobs, the job they were hired to do, but then they have this other job of communicating, coordinating and collaborating.’
— Jared Spataro, Microsoft
In a 2022 Harris Poll survey of more than 1,200 workers and executives, bosses estimated that their teams lost an average 7.47 hours a week—nearly an entire day—to poor communications. Based on an average salary of $66,967, the lost time translates to a cost of $12,506 for an employee annually, according to the report conducted on behalf of Grammarly, a proofreading-software company.
Time spent communicating online has soared alongside remote and hybrid work. Slack and Dropbox, among other companies, have tried tackling communications overload by prescribing dedicated times for meetings and focus time. Some are also shortening meeting times and raising the bar for calling a meeting in the first place.
Calendly, the Atlanta-based scheduling-software maker, restricted core meeting hours to between noon and 5 p.m., reserving the rest of the day for focused work time, after noticing that meetings were stretching into some of its further-flung employees’ evenings and early mornings. About two years in, “we’ve found our people continue to embrace it,” said Calendly Chief Executive Tope Awotona.
Advertisement - Scroll to Continue
Too often, meetings are scheduled without clarity on what they are supposed to achieve, said Rita J. King, executive vice president of workplace-consulting firm Science House. “The key is to not invite someone to a meeting unless you are absolutely certain that they belong there, and you can tell them why,” she said.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What communication boundaries do you set to protect your time? Join the conversation below.
Microsoft, which holds a large stake in OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, is baking generative AI features into core workplace tools such as Outlook and PowerPoint to remove what its leaders have called the “drudgery” of some work tasks. A majority of workers surveyed by the company said they think AI would help lessen their workloads, although nearly half said they worry the technology could imperil their job security.
Some workers have resorted to their own hacks to get work done. Kimani Bonner, who works remotely from Nashville, Tenn., as a project manager for a software company, is in as many as 10 back-to-back meetings a day.
He blocks time on his online calendar for heads-down work. He also makes lists of what he needs to get done during his focus-time hours as a reminder to not let himself get distracted during that time.
Those habits “saved me from working 60 to 70 hours a week,” he said.
Wow. Worth reading just for those nuggets.
2 Likes
Us hard working WFH types use the time saved from meetings for napping, meanig I’m even fresher to really tackle my 4* hour day head on
*Tuesday to Thursday
This is gas given what their software enables.
1 Like
I’m increasingly experiencing more meetings about meetings, and then sub-groups & working groups having further side meetings to discuss the first set of meetings. These meetings are plagued by repetition & there are no updates, naturally enough, in many of them (nothing has happened since we had yesterday’s daily meeting etc). The awkward silences that ensue often lead to someone blurting out something that results in a random new work stream being generated & another bundle of meetings is arranged.
My own principles for setting up meetings tie into @Julio_Geordio ’s rest mindset. You don’t want a meeting on a Monday or Friday & you don’t want one before 10am, during the 2-hour 12pm to 2pm lunch window or after 4pm. Meetings should therefore only be arranged any time from Tuesday-Thursday inclusive during the permitted 10am-12pm & 2pm-4pm windows.
13 Likes
Thank fuck I’m not party to reality. I couldn’t stand it and it wouldn’t tolerate me for a minute (wouldn’t mind the pension though)
The only meetings worth having are stand up 8AM meetings where you demand the lazy bastards update on progress the day before and plan for the day. Everything else is a waste of time
Especially anything HR get near
Completely accurate pal
We have a meeting protocol, poorly adhered to, that 45 mins is the max time allowed for any meeting. Thus giving 15 mins at least in every hour to do something be that work or go to the jacks
Some people are completely ruthless on it and decline every meeting longer than 45 mins, or decline and resend the invite for only 45 mins.
I’d never arrange a meeting before 9:30 or after 16:30. I would only set a meeting up on a Friday ( morning) as an overflow from another week day. Any meeting request received after 3pm on a Friday is declined.
4 Likes
It’s vital to ensure if you’re forced to have a meeting with watery meandering cunts, you schedule it as close to lunch as possible to get it wrapped up promptly.
That’s all well in good. But what when you work primarily on the continent?
Jesus
3 Likes
I rarely send any emails these days.
Teams chats and meetings on the other hand. 
2 Likes
The financial sector/accountancy’s gain has been the civil service’s loss
3 Likes
I think it’s the top brass trying to force through the return to the office.
We wouldn’t need to have daily teams meetings if we were all in the office etc etc.