Will Your Pay Be Docked If You Run a Crappy Meeting

Company meetings are being scrutinized for their efficiencies and costs. That meeting-filled calendar of yours may start looking a bit empty. The math is somewhat straightforward. The average employee is making a little north of $50USD/hour, not including benefits and other costs. So, an “average” hour-long meeting with 10 people costs over $500.?

Not so bad, but look at the gestalt. A report produced by meeting note taker Otter.AI found that large companies could save as much as $100 million a year by holding fewer meetings and cutting down on their invite lists. Unnecessary meetings can cost big companies $100 million a year, report finds CBS News.

Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce company, is taking the memos super seriously. The company rolled out a calculator embedded in the employees’ calendar app that estimates the cost of any meeting with three or more people, using average compensation data, along with meeting length and attendee count, to place a price tag on the meeting. The company clearly pays its employees well. According to Chief Operating Officer Kaz Nejatian, a typical 30-minute meeting with three employees can run from $700 up to $1,600. In a recent Forbes article, Nejatian says, “No one at Shopify would expense a $500 dinner, but lots and lots of people spend way more than that in meetings without ever making a decision.” Meetings aren’t the devil. Just bad meetings are. The trick, we think, is to insist on meeting with outcomes. Here are some tips for how to do it.