[Jjinbit] The Win-Win Card for 'Productivity and Job Satisfaction'? Three Days a Week 'No Meeting Day' [Office Shift]⑩

'Video Conferences' Overflowing, Even Talk of 'Meeting Hell'
"Video Calls for 4 or Fewer, In-Person for 10 or More Are Efficient"

Editor's Note[Jjinbit] is short for 'Jung Hyunjin's Business Trend' and 'Real Business Trend,' a segment that showcases trends in the changing nature of work. Within Jjinbit, the segment 'Office Shift' closely examines changes in the office environment triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and serves as a foundation for exploring answers to new work styles through experiments we have conducted together. It is delivered to you every Saturday and Sunday morning. After 40 installments, it will also be available as a book.

"We will eliminate meetings for you."

What would you think if you saw such a notice after returning to the office after a long time? Employees of Shopify, a global e-commerce company based in Canada, were surprised when they returned to work in early January after the year-end holidays and received an email. The email from CEO Toby Lutke announced a 'calendar purge' policy to drastically reduce inefficient meetings. The policy aimed to eliminate meetings involving two or more people as much as possible while all 10,000 employees were working remotely.

Looking into the details, Wednesdays were designated as meeting-free days, and large meetings with 50 or more participants had to be scheduled within a fixed time on Thursdays. The calendar managing employees' schedules was equipped with a mechanism to prevent regular meetings with three or more people. Messages were sent for meetings that did not meet the criteria. In this environment, scheduling a meeting required careful consideration of the schedule, necessity, and number of participants.

Shopify took these measures to change the inefficient meeting culture. Employees who had been unable to focus on individual work due to back-to-back meetings and had to sit in front of cameras with blank expressions cheered. CEO Lutke explained that this measure saved 322,000 hours annually, equivalent to hiring 150 additional employees.

About a month after implementation, in mid-last month, Shopify's Chief Human Resources Officer (CHO) Tia Silas told Bloomberg News, "Some meetings are coming back." However, she said, "That's okay." She emphasized that the company's policy gave everyone the authority to reject meeting requests and encouraged people to think about what they want to achieve through meetings rather than just gathering.

◆ 'Meeting Hell' Revisited Due to COVID-19... In-Person and Video Collaboration

From group chairpersons to junior employees, the so-called 'meeting hell' has been a longstanding problem within companies for decades. Many workers experience being dragged into meetings all day and only starting their actual work at the end of the day. But does holding meetings necessarily lead to good results? Not always. It is common to discuss for a long time without reaching a conclusion, leaving a feeling of wasted time.

The cost that companies and employees pour into unnecessary meetings is enormous.

Last year, Professor Steven Rogelberg of the University of North Carolina surveyed 632 American workers and estimated that the cost of attending unnecessary meetings in large companies with over 5,000 employees amounts to $110 million annually (about 130 billion KRW). Participants spent 18 hours per week in meetings, 31% of which they judged as unnecessary, yet only 14% refused to attend such meetings.

The situation is similar in Korea. According to a 2017 survey by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry of 1,000 workers on 'Meeting Culture,' employees held an average of 3.7 meetings per week, with 1.7 of those perceived as unnecessary. Although this survey was conducted before COVID-19, the current situation is not much different.

With the advent of the COVID-19 era, another meeting problem began to trouble workers. As remote work expanded and employees could not come to the office, face-to-face meetings decreased, while video meetings surged. These were non-face-to-face meetings using platforms like Zoom and Microsoft (MS) Teams. Tasks that could have been quickly discussed by sitting next to each other or meeting in the hallway now required scheduling video meetings, leading to significant unnecessary time consumption. This marked the beginning of 'video meeting hell.'

According to MS research, weekly meeting time using MS Teams increased by 252% between March 2020 and February 2022. The number of weekly meetings also rose by 153%. Notably, short and sudden meetings increased by 8% over two years. Meetings under 15 minutes accounted for 60% of all Teams meetings. MS analyzed that short meetings under 15 minutes increased by 39% within a year from February 2021, showing a faster growth rate compared to other meeting durations.

After spending three years in the COVID-19 period, our office environment has changed. Video meetings, which were rarely held before, have become common, coexisting with in-person meetings. As meeting methods diversified, concerns about efficient meeting management deepened. Factors such as the purpose of the meeting, number of participants, and participants' work styles now influence the choice of meeting format.

◆ "Use Video Meetings for 4 or Fewer Participants, In-Person for 10 or More"

Samsung Electronics, a leading Korean company, also started 'reducing meetings' this year. Kyung Kye-hyun, President of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) division, set this as one of the goals for employees. This measure reflected employees' complaints about inefficient meetings that only consumed time. The company ordered a 25% reduction in total meetings and requested that about half of the remaining 75% be conducted remotely to improve work efficiency. The goal was to reduce meetings as much as possible and avoid wasting time on unnecessary travel for essential meetings.

If a meeting is necessary, which should be chosen: in-person or video? What criteria should be used?

A British company that experimented with both meeting formats during COVID-19 concluded that the decision should be based on the number of participants. Video meetings rely on cameras and microphones, which have limitations. It is difficult for participants to speak simultaneously, and they must observe others' expressions on small screens. This environment makes it hard to conduct meetings quickly and efficiently to produce results. Considering this, video meetings are suitable for small groups of four or fewer, while in-person meetings are better for groups of ten or more.

In October 2021, Professor Paul Mizen of the University of Nottingham surveyed about 2,100 British workers and found that when two people held video meetings, they perceived a 5.9% increase in efficiency compared to face-to-face meetings. For groups of three to four, video meetings were rated 5.2% more efficient than in-person meetings. However, when the number of participants increased to five to nine, the efficiency gain dropped to 2.4%, about half.

The reason smaller meetings were perceived as more efficient is that video platforms save travel time while providing an environment where all participants can express their opinions.

When the number of participants exceeds ten, video meetings are perceived to be 1.4% less efficient than in-person meetings. With more than ten participants, it becomes difficult to contribute opinions in video meetings, and often everyone except the speaker must mute themselves, making discussion practically difficult. One person holds the microphone while others become spectators. Also, the small size of participants' faces on the video platform makes it hard to read expressions.

◆ What If We Create 'Meeting-Free Days' Like Shopify?

Shopify is not the only company creating days without meetings to allow employees to focus on individual work. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, Facebook's parent company, designated Wednesdays as meeting-free days in May 2020 during the early COVID-19 period. In an interview with CNBC, he said, "Many people think, 'If I don't go to the office, if there are no meetings, I would be more efficient,'" and announced the introduction of meeting-free days alongside remote work.

How many meeting-free days per week create the best combination of increased productivity and employee satisfaction?

In January last year, Professor Ben Raker and others from the Henley Business School at the University of Reading, UK, published in the management journal MIT Sloan Management Review a study of 76 companies with over 1,000 employees that implemented meeting-free days for 12 months. They found that productivity was highest when there were four meeting-free days out of five working days per week. This means productivity peaked when only one day per week allowed meetings.

When meeting-free days were one day per week, productivity increased by 35%, but when extended to four days, productivity rose by 74%. However, if all five days were meeting-free, productivity slightly decreased to 64%. Professor Raker analyzed that companies with four meeting-free days responded faster to messenger questions and had clearer communication. Misunderstandings like "I thought you said this" also decreased.

However, employee job satisfaction peaked at 65% with three meeting-free days per week, then dropped to 62% with four days, and sharply to 42% with five days. Employees' sense of belonging to the company was 28% with one meeting-free day, rose to 44% with four days, but fell to 27% with five days. Stress related to meetings decreased by 75% when all five days were meeting-free, the largest reduction observed.

Based on these experiments, Professor Raker concluded that three meeting-free days per week is optimal. To maintain a certain level of social connection among employees and manage weekly schedules, two days is also appropriate. In fact, about 47% of surveyed companies adopted two meeting-free days per week, reducing total meetings by 40%.