HR tech company Werkvloer is publishing a study among 1,200 Dutch office workers on meeting culture. Employees spend an average of 11 hours a week in meetings and rate 40% of that time as unnecessary. The study was carried out in May, together with an independent research agency, and is released today under the name National Meeting Monitor.
Of the 1,200 office workers surveyed, 40% call a significant share of their meetings unnecessary, even though they spend an average of 11 hours a week in them. That works out to more than four hours a week going to meetings the participant themselves considers of little value. The pressure is not evenly spread: employees under 30 feel the meeting pressure most strongly and more often say meetings come at the expense of their own work. Set against international figures on meeting time, the Dutch outcome is not out of step: researchers elsewhere have long reported that a large share of meeting time is experienced as unproductive too.
The finding fits a wider trend: now that hybrid work is the norm, the number of meetings is growing faster than the time available for them, while the agenda of any single meeting rarely grows sharper to match. "Meetings are the easiest thing to schedule and the hardest thing to cancel," says Nadia el Amrani, founder of Werkvloer. "With this research, we want to hold up a mirror to organisations, so meeting again becomes a choice instead of a habit."
The study was carried out as a representative panel study among 1,200 Dutch office workers, in May and in partnership with an independent research agency, so the results give a reliable picture of the working population. Werkvloer is turning the measurement into a recurring study: from this year onward it will appear annually under the name National Meeting Monitor, so developments in meeting culture can be tracked across multiple years.