Steven Rogelberg discusses bad meetings in The New York Times
Steven Rogelberg, professor of management, psychology, and organizational science, was featured in “That Meeting Was Too Long (and It Probably Could’ve Been an Email)” from The New York Times.
Although the basic premise of meetings may be for leaders to engage with employees, pass along important information and updates, or provide collaborative spaces for decision-making, they can be a source of stress for both employees and managers.
“Meetings in and of themselves don’t cause problems,” said Rogelberg. “They were not created with a sadistic mind-set.” However, they become a problem when employees have too many meetings which limits their ability to get actual work completed in a timely manner.
In a 2022 study, Rogelberg found that office employees spent about 18 hours a week on average in meetings, amounting to roughly $25,000 in payroll costs per employee annually. In addition, employees felt they didn’t need to be in 30% of the meetings they were invited to.
“Bad meetings are what causes the problems,” he explained. “When meetings are poorly run and have too many attendees and run too long and don’t have a clear purpose, that is problematic.”