Meeting Time and Cost Infographics and Statistics

I was recently asked to provide some references for all the meeting statistics flying around in the business world.  Most are very old but are still being quoted today.  In checking the web, I not only found the same old statistics, I found them graphically displayed in infographics.  So I share some of them below.  Just so you know, I have a RARA meeting infographic based on my meeting management approach on what is needed have better meetings rather than quote stats.  The book R.A!R.A! A Meeting Wizard’s Approach (available on Amazon #ad) has a flow chart of how to use the approach to have more effective and efficient meetings, as well as forms to aid in the process.

Check out this ”You Waste a Lot of Time at Work” infographic from IT company Atlassian on how business people waste time.  The #2 reason is meetings.  As graphics go, I find the average meeting attendee images are very clever.  Here are their sources for the meetings potion of their infographic: Meetings in America and The State of Meetings Today.

In “America Meets Alot” post, Attentiv provides some different statistics than you typically see in a few charts they provide.   Their six meeting types are more specific, yet they fall under the same five general meeting types I present.

I also found a clever “Meetings in the Digital Age” infographic” from Lucid Meetings with some updates from the original 1970’s and 1990’s sources used in most infographics I saw.  So you may want to scroll down and check out the words and numbers in the blog post following the graphic.  Here are their extrapolations as updated findings. 

   1, Every day in the US, there are somewhere between 36 - 56 million meetings, not 11 millio

   2. There is NO consensus on what percentage of meetings are effective. 

   3. The cost of ineffective meetings is higher than $37 billion!

BTW: I like Lucid Meetings and find them trustworthy.  Why? Because they retweet my meeting articles and blog posts quite often! If you want to help improve their stats, take the five minute survey at the bottom of their post.

If you just want some numbers for a PowerPoint presentation, check out the stats listed in in 2WorkSMART post “The Impact of Bad Meetings on Your Business.”

You may also want to review “The Ugly Truth About Meetings” infographic from INC. magazine’s blog. The infographic mentions many common meeting problems and touts video conferencing as a solution to lack of attendee focus.  Obviously they have not seen how some people work at their desk while listening in on a meeting just so they can be marked as attending, even though they did not actively participate.  You can prevent most of the meeting problems this infographic mentions with tips from my book above or having someone who understands meeting management and facilitation do a simple training session.

Not yet convinced that bad meetings are costing your business unnecessary dollars?  Read the Money Watch article ”How much do useless meetings cost?”