Stop Wasting Time In Meetings

The main story

Global technology company Cisco published its first hybrid work index revealing that 52% of meeting attendees don’t say a word.

On Thursday, Cisco, owner of video conferencing provider Webex, published a report analyzing more than 650M meeting participants in August through anonymized data.

Out of the meetings, 48% of attendees did all the talking, leaving speculation as to the level of effectiveness remote meetings have among employees.

With employee schedules back to back and more than half not saying anything, Jeetu Patel, EVP of Cisco’s security and collaboration unit, begs the question, “Is that really the best use of their time?”

Since the start of the pandemic, Cisco has invested heavily in new features for Webex, competing with rivals Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

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Teachable Moment

Learn to be intentional with your time.

Chances are, your schedules have filled up more than usual ever since the pandemic started.

This analysis by Cisco only quantifies what most already think of being in constant meetings: they’re not always necessary.

How many of these do you actually need?

At the very least, assess if the meetings you create or participate in need to be as long as they are and set firm boundaries if your calendar sways towards less impactful items.

Remember: it’s not just time you’re wasting, it’s the hourly cost of your salary x the number of people in each meeting.

Is that a price your company is willing to pay?