Company Meetings Lose Time to Broadband and WiFi Problems
A new Research Without Barriers survey of 1,000 UK workers who attend meetings, which was commissioned by online print and design firm MOO, has claimed that 20 minutes out of each 1 hour (average) meeting is “wasted company time” (agreed by 90% of respondents) and 4.6 minutes of that stems from WiFi or internet problems.
The survey claims we are “extremely unproductive” when it comes to meetings, not least due to poor timekeeping and small talk, but also due to connectivity problems etc.
On average, up to 5 minutes (4.6) is allegedly spent fixing WiFi / connectivity issues which prominently effects 36% of those in Yorkshire, 35% in the South West, 32% in East Anglia and 31% in Midlands, North West and Wales respectively. This drops to 28% in London, 23% in the wider South East, 22% in North East and 20% in Scotland.
Advertisement
Mind you the survey also suggests that for 38% simply choosing where to sit can also take about 5 minutes (I’ve never seen it take anything like that long myself), while 34% said they can spend up to 10 minutes discussing and adjusting the temperature of a meeting room before they’re ready to start (clearly management could do a better job here).
The main reasons people are wasting time in meetings
Waiting for people to arrive (90%)
Setting up technology (70%)
Dialling in to a conference call or waiting for others to dial in (59%)
Locating the meeting room (55%)
Connectivity issues (51%)
The number of meetings workers are expected to attend on a daily basis also presents challenges to both company and individual productivity, with 63% of Brits attending at least one meeting a day and a third (36%) attending between two and four.
Finally, 10% admit to spending between 9 and 14 hours per week in meetings, although this varies wildly across professions. Those working in human resources spend an average of six hours of their working week in meetings (obviously that’s part of the job), while retail, catering and leisure workers spend almost half this amount (3.6 hours) during an average week.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Full Fibre UK ISP Hyperoptic Has a Hidden 500Mbps Package UPDATE
Presumably though, all of these are left behind by the meeting in the first place in a lot of cases.
Unless you’re in a modern company, most sections of most meetings include at least one irrelevant person. Assume a 12 person meeting lasting two hours, with at least two people not relevant at any one time. Four hours lost.
Also, what about the time saved by remote people phoning the meeting in? Might take a few minutes to get them all online, but you want to consider travel time and cost for the alternatives?
Not saying that tech couldn’t be better – we’ve all spent time around the boardroom table whilst a screen and network connection is established. I’ve just got a bugbear about meetings is all.