It’s time to rethink the workplace meeting

Anima Leadership CEO Annahid Dashtgard says the main reason why meetings go awry is because managers often lack management skills.

At a time of workplace upheaval, with employees being forced back into the office, a movement is building to challenge the time suck of poorly run meetings. Dubbed “meeting hygiene,” it’s a push to curb workplace huddles that run on too long, siphon off employees’ focus, and lead to no meaningful decisions.

More than a third of professionals said unnecessary meetings hurt their productivity, according to a 2022 survey from recruitment firm Robert Half. Employees hand over 18 hours a week to meetings , even though they’d prefer to decline a third of them, according to a 2022 report from organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg and Otter.ai, a transcr