You. Is your company holding too many meetings? Hey, this is Erica at Bumbun's book pick, and I was just reading an article by the Harvard Business Review, and employees are found to be more productive when there are less meetings. So during the pandemic, it was found that when a number of meetings rose by 13.5%, it tend to have a negative impact on workers. In fact, too many Zoom meetings caused physical and psychological problems, and this is due to work from home
Tanya Coles
@MsColes77Ā Ā·Ā 4:04
So prior to the pandemic, when we were all meeting as one big group, we did have a lot of meetings, and I found them to be quite boring because a lot of times they would discuss matters that did not apply to my particular specialty
Erica Jean
@HeyItsEricaĀ Ā·Ā 1:37
And I thought that was just so funny because you can't hold millions of meetings and then talk about production at the same time. So if it's not absolutely important or necessary, then sending it in, the chat or an email is preferable. It really is sitting in on three, four meetings a week. It was too much. But I can honestly say that it's gotten better. It's just down to two a week. But thank you so much for sharing
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8Ā Ā·Ā 1:59
And it's exhausting having to meet and as you mentioned in your swell, the idea of hey join for meetings and then also somehow find time for productivity is extremely frustrating and causes burnout left and right. And for those who are in the workforce who are black women, we suffer the most because it seems like we have to work sometimes even harder and do more and somehow get it all done and there's just not enough time
Erica Jean
@HeyItsEricaĀ Ā·Ā 1:08
And you can set it to notify you on your desktop up, or if you have it on your mobile device, you can set the notification so that the person will get it. Holding a million meetings is just not cool. Because when I was younger and working, it was all right because, okay, it gets me out of doing work. I can just sit down in the meeting. But now just doing the meetings is so draining
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8Ā Ā·Ā 2:30
I'm glad that you agree, because to be honest, I would say regardless of where you sit in your career, whether you're starting out or you're somewhere in the middle or more senior, I would say that all meetings are pointless and frustrating and definitely a space of unproductivity
Erica Jean
@HeyItsEricaĀ Ā·Ā 1:03
Hey, Natasha, thank you for mentioning those wonderful points. And I do understand what you mean by the performativeness of, I know that's not a word of being on the job. And during the meetings, I see it quite often from my end. And on the other side, I definitely do. And I do agree, agree that some meetings are helpful, very productive
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8Ā Ā·Ā 1:12
Some orgs do it for the full day, some do for half days. It really just depends on the organization, depends on kind of what is the objective that's set out. But do you feel you're going to propose to your organization the idea of having like a no meetings day or section of the day?
Erica Jean
@HeyItsEricaĀ Ā·Ā 1:53
So I would love to mention that because there are some departments, like my husband's department, they don't really have the meetings like that. And I think it's because they deal with the sales aspect. So I haven't seen them doing any meetings, really. They may have had one last month, but in my department, it's like mandatory weekly meetings
Swell Team
@SwellĀ Ā·Ā 0:15
Natasha Nurse
@DressingRoom8Ā Ā·Ā 1:58
So exactly like what you were saying around we can slack this, we can email if you probably propose it and share a template of what the proposed slack message design or email design could look like, and then also even provide the ROI for the business. Because what people fail to realize is actually how expensive meetings are
