The convenience of remote meetings has led to employees attending more work meetings than they once did, forcing employees to multitask.
Key Details
- More companies are relying on remote-work options as fewer workers come into the office full time. Yet it seems that the convenience of video calls has upped the number of meetings workers attend weekly.
- In fact, the number of daily meetings workers attend jumped 153% compared to March 2020, Daniel Howley reports in Yahoo Finance.
- With all the extra meetings, 42% of employees say that they feel forced to multitask during meetings in order to get their work done on time.
Why it’s news
As the world adjusts to remote work, there will be wrinkles to iron out of the system. Finding the right balance of scheduled meetings is one of those wrinkles.
When working in person, some questions or issues can be resolved by walking down the hall or leaning around a cubicle wall, but with remote work, employees need to schedule a call, leading to more meetings on the calendar.
Meetings interrupting the work flow can be a detriment to employee efficiency, and multitasking during work can lead to attendees missing key information.
Surprising statistic
While 87% of employees said in a Microsoft study that they are more productive when working from home, 85% of managers said they had a hard time determining how productive their employees were.
Studies like one conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that hybrid and remote workers tend to get more work done than in-office employees, partly because they can choose what time of day to get work done.
Columbia Business School assistant professor Melanie Brucks recommended that employers look for more concrete ways to measure employee productivity rather than judging by whether or not they’re in the office.
Though, if employers want to increase productivity, they may want to consider cutting down on the meetings that interrupt employee workflow.
