Meeting effectiveness analysis

If you're interested in understanding whether your team is in too many meetings, you're not alone. Meeting effectiveness is one of our most popular analysis topics.

To make it as easy as possible to dig into this area, here are a few metrics to start with:

1. How much time is our company spending in meetings?

Metric to consider: calendar:events:hours:meetings

Why this metric? More than 8 hours of meetings per week for knowledge workers tend to correlate with lower engagement scores, less focus time to accomplish deep work, and longer work days. It’s important to track and understand what portion of your organization is in this category in order to pinpoint where to take action.

2. How much of that time is in very large or recurring meetings?

Metric to consider: calendar:v1:meetings:attendees:10-or-more:hours AND calendar:v1:recurring:meetings:hours

Why this metric? Large meetings tend to be less productive and more conducive to distraction than do smaller group sessions. Similarly, recurring meetings typically stay on the calendar long beyond their usefulness, which is related to inefficiency and can bog down calendars. If you see high levels of either of these meeting types in your analysis, this is a good place to focus any interventions.

3. Are employees multi-tasking during meetings?

Metric to consider: calendar:events:focus

Why this metric? Distractions in meetings—especially large meetings—can be prevalent, and it's possible to quantify how much of meeting time is spent doing other types of work. While some usage of google docs and the like may be required for the meeting to be productive, having a value for calendar:events:focus below 85% is a red flag that distractions may be limiting meeting effectiveness.

4. How often do meetings start and end late?

Metric to consider: zoom:v2:late:meetings AND zoom:v2:overtime:meetings

Why this metric? Cleaning up meeting hygiene is often a quick win for teams that frequently start or end their meetings late. This, too, is quantifiable at the team level, and versions of this metric exist for both zoom and google meet.

5. Who is creating all the meetings?

Metric to consider: calendar:events:created

Why this metric? We tend to find in our analyses that close to 5% of people at a company create 60% of meetings, and for that reason, meeting related interventions are often best targeted at those people who have the greatest impact on meeting hours for the broader company.

5. How often do managers meet 1:1 with their direct reports?

Metric to consider: calendar:manager1on1:count

Why this metric? On a more positive note, some meetings tend to be associated with favorable survey outcomes, and one of these is manager 1:1s. When employees meet once every 1-2 weeks with their manager, they tend to report higher levels of engagement and more favorable perceptions of support. If you see pockets where 1:1s are happening infrequently, this represents an opportunity to drive engagement.

6. How often do managers co-attend their team's meetings?

Metric to consider: calendar:v1:manager-co-attendance:pct

Why this metric? While some amount of co-attendance can be good for coaching and training purposes or to move projects forward, we typically recommend managers attend about 20-30% of their direct reports' calls, and only in cases where their presence adds unique value. If you see very high or very low values for this metric, it's a sign that further investigation into management practices may be needed.