Calling Pointless Meetings - Why Business Firms Need To Do Away With This Working Policy

In business organizations, calling meetings is an integral part of a normal workday. The reasons for calling these meetings can vary from discussing strategy issues to making new policy announcement or even to simply introduce a new team member. Unfortunately, many of the tasks for which these official get-togethers are held are too insignificant in the modern work environment. That is why the professional consultants from the leading German recruitment agencies, advice their clients about minimizing the number of such meetings within organisations. This request is justified by the fact that most such gatherings impact the productivity of employees, especially when the meetings are called for something that can be easily accomplished through the use of technology.

 

Why Meetings Have Become Pointless?

The concept of meetings was extremely relevant in times when the only means of inter-office communication was through face to face interaction between the employees. However, the advances in technology have long since solved this problem and in the modern times it is possible to communicate to an entire group of people in real time without gathering them in one room. In fact it is possible for a group of people to share data and information and data across the entire team without moving from their workstation. Hence calling meetings for such reasons has become a completely pointless activity within business organizations. At the same time, some meetings, such as the ones called to discuss policy matters etc, are still critical for the optimum working of an organization.

 

Reasons That Make Everyday Meetings Pointless

According to the top professionals employed by the leading headhunters Germany, there is at least one meeting going on within a business organization at any given point of time. These professionals believe that in most such cases, the meetings are used by the managers to merely ascertain their significant position within the hierarchical structure of the organization to their subordinates, making such gatherings totally pointless. The other reasons that make a majority of meetings pointless are discussed in brief as follows.

 

They Distract The Employees From Their Assigned Tasks

Whenever a meeting is called, the participating employees are expected to prepare data and details relevant to the agenda. This distracts them from completing the tasks that have been assigned to them, and which might be more important. In case the purpose of a meeting is simply to get an update on the current project from each team member, using technological tools such as email, messenger, video calling etc are definitely more viable options. The same holds true for meeting that are called to make new policy announcements or to share other updates.

They Result In Wastage Of Time

Organizing even the most informal meetings requires investment of time and effort. This naturally leads to wastage of valuable man hours of the participating employees. The wastage is not only in terms of the time that the employees actually spend at the meeting, but also in terms of the time they waste in discussing its agenda. In addition, many participating employees tend to while away a considerable amount of time just before and after the meeting discussing other official or even personal issues with their peers, further adding to the overall time wastage, which could be used and accomplishment of important tasks.

 

It Derails The Priority Scheduling Of The Employees

One of the most damaging effects of meetings, especially the unplanned ones is that they upset the work schedules of most employees. In fact most managers fail to consider the work schedules of their team members before planning a meeting. This often means that the employees are expected to reschedule their tasks around the meeting, the only purpose of which might to inform the participants about a new policy update.