Time Wasted In Meetings: 39 Meeting Statistics

Key Time Wasted In Meetings Statistics

These meeting statistics will make you think twice about your long work meetings:

1. Each week, 55 million meetings are held in the United States. That's equivalent of 11 million per day and more than 1 billion per year.
2. On average, employees spend at least 3 hours per week in meetings.
3. Around 83% of employees spend up to one-third of their workweek in meetings.
4. 24 billion hours are wasted each year due to unproductive meetings.
5. 30% of workers spend more than 5 hours each week in meetings.
6. Since 2000, the time employees spend in meetings has increased by 8% to 10% every year.
7. The U.S. loses $37 billion each year due to unproductive meetings. If we made our meetings productive, our companies and economy would likely be more successful.
8. Employees are involved in at least 8 meetings per week, on average.
9. Corporate employees spend 4 hours preparing for and attending meetings every week, on average.
10. All employees above junior level have 10 meetings per week.
11. Employees in executive management roles or higher have 12 meetings per week.
12. Employees in VP, director and c-level roles have 17 meetings per week.

How Many Hours Are Wasted In Meetings?

As a country, 24 billion hours are wasted each year due to unproductive meetings in the United States. For each individual, employees spend 4 hours preparing for and attending meetings each week.

How Many Meetings Are There In The U.S. Each Week?

There are 55 million meetings taking place in the United States each week. You'd be surprised, but 83% of employees spend up to one-third of their entire workweek in meetings.

How Much Time Do Employees Spend In Meetings?

This is shocking: 30% of workers in the U.S. spend more than 5 hours each week in meetings.

The sad part is, employees will spend at least 3 hours per week in meetings. Think about how much more productive our economy could be if our workers spent less time in meetings and more time doing things that made our economy more successful.

How Much Time Is Lost Because Of Meetings?

Unfortunately, 24 billion hours are lost each year due to unproductive meetings. The amount of time wasted in meetings varies by industry and state, but the overall data is shown below:

1. 71% of workers waste time every week due to unnecessary or cancelled meetings.
2. Employees spend 31 hours each month in unproductive meetings.
3. On average, meetings are delayed 10 minutes and 40 seconds, which is equivalent to 3 days and 2 hours lost each year for each employee!
4. 40% of workers waste up to 30 minutes just figuring out where a meeting should take place.
5. Employees spend over an hour simply preparing for each meeting they're scheduled to go to.
6. 47% of employees complain about the fact that meetings waste their time the most at work.
7. 45% of employees report feeling overwhelmed by the number of meetings they are required to attend.

Meeting Attendance Rate Statistics

1. 39% of employees have fallen asleep during their meetings.
2. 73% of workers have worked on other things during meetings.
3. 96% of employees have missed meetings.
4. 91% of workers have daydreamed during their meetings.

Percentage Of Meetings That Are Productive

Just 11% of meetings are productive and 89% aren't, despite organizations spending around 15% of their working hours in meetings.

Cost Of Unproductive Meetings

Time is not the only thing we lose while being in unproductive meetings. We lose lots of money!

1. Unproductive meetings cause companies in the U.S. to lose $37 billion each year.
2. Useless meetings can cause one big business to lose up to $300 million each year.
3. That cost can be worth approximately 300,000 work hours each year. Think about how much work could be done in that time!
4. Unfortunately, 1-hour meetings with 5 attendees can cost companies $338 of salary.

Sources

1. https://www.zippia.com/advice/meeting-statistics/
2. https://otter.ai/blog/meeting-statistics
3. https://doodle.com/en/resources/research-and-reports/state-of-meeting-report-2021/
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2019/11/25/half-of-all-meetings-are-a-waste-of-timeheres-how-to-improve-them/?sh=56055d612ea9
5. https://www.servicebell.com/post/time-wasted-in-meetings
6. https://www.booqed.com/blog/minutes-wasted-of-meeting-50-shocking-meeting-statistics