No Meetings, Ever? How Shopify's No Meetings Policy Could Hurt CX Teams
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At their best meetings are collaborative, social and productive. Setting time aside to meet with colleagues and align your priorities for the day, week or quarter, has become a standard practice in the corporate setting. These 30-minute or hour-long pockets of time force employees to communicate outside of an email or instant message and get together face-to-face (or screen-to-screen).
However, meetings have evolved over the past few years. Employees may have once kicked off their week with a discussion in their office conference room, watching their colleagues trickle in highlighting the details of their weekends. But, these moments have now become a mix of in-person and virtual conversations. Meeting rooms now remain empty on work from home days and most in-person discussions have at least one person dialing in from their home office.
While meetings are still commonplace in the work from home environment, some argue that they have become less critical. And one eCommerce brand has chosen to forgo the traditional meeting structure altogether.
Shopify, the eCommerce platform for online businesses, announced in January that meetings had become an obstacle to productivity. In a company wide memo, Chief Operating Officer Kaz Nejatian shared that the company would be deleting these unnecessary touchpoints.
Shopify leaders noted that a lack of meetings would free up their employees and empower them to work uninterrupted. By removing all recurring meetings with more than three participants, the company was able to gain 322,000 hours back for employees. After a two week waiting period, employees were asked to add back any mission critical meetings and maintain a strict no-meeting day policy on Wednesdays.
Workers were also encouraged to decline meetings if they felt they weren’t needed and remove themselves from large internal chat groups.
CEO Tobi Lutke shared of the meeting subtraction, “It’s much easier to add things than to remove things. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done with that period of time. As people add things, the set of things that can be done becomes smaller. Then, you end up with more and more people just maintaining the status quo.”
The State of Meetings in 2023
Meetings have clearly experienced a shift, but why have they become such a burden? A new study from Otter.AI pinpoints the exact cost of unnecessary meeting attendance and highlights some of the reasons employees are unhappy about the amount of meetings they are attending. In a survey conducted across 20 different industries, researchers asked employees their thoughts on meetings, their reactions to invitations and analyzed deeper sentiment behind meetings in the workplace.
Here’s the lowdown on meetings:
- Employees have 17.7 meetings a week, totaling up to 18 hours on average
Of those meetings, employees deemed 30% as unnecessary or 5 per week - When asked about unnecessary meetings, 41% of employees felt they could skip meetings held by a leader in another department
- Employees spent 70% of their time multitasking in meetings where they felt their presence was not needed
- 80% of employees stated that their productivity would improve if they could skip unnecessary meetings
From these statistics it is clear that some meetings are not achieving what they set out to. In meetings where their presence wasn’t needed employees are working on other projects, communicating with other colleagues and potentially just tuning out.
So, it seems Shopify was onto something. The more time employees spend in unnecessary meetings, the more unproductive they are. And the effects of unproductive meetings go beyond just day-to-day frustration. 70% of employees said that their job satisfaction overall would improve by skipping unnecessary meetings.
By giving employees their time back, organizations not only benefit from greater levels of efficiency and productivity, they gain a more engaged and satisfied workforce. The report notes that a shift in culture is necessary to make meetings feel more relevant — respondents shared their thoughts stating that it would require a shift away from always being available or an environment that supports more autonomy in decision making.
Shopify is enabling these freedoms by eliminating meetings. The company’s COO joked that employees were even declining his meetings, giving them the power to work how they choose and decline invitations that don’t serve their needs. As we see a shift towards more employee-centric attitudes, we will likely see policies like this implemented in organizations that truly want to empower employees.
Are Meetings Really That Bad?
While it seems there is a growing negative sentiment surrounding meetings today, there is still research supporting the idea that they have changed for the better. Researchers from the University of Texas and software company Vyopta analyzed the status of meetings since 2020. And according to their findings, the picture of long, dragging and unnecessary meetings may not be entirely true.
Using metadata from Zoom, Teams and Webex meetings across the technology, healthcare, energy and financial service sectors, researchers compared their employees meeting activity from April to May 2020 with the same periods in 2021 and 2022.
The researchers noticed a few changes:
- The number of remote meetings employees attended increased 60% between 2020 and 2022
- Meetings decreased in length by 25%, dropping from 43 minutes to 33 minutes on average
- Meetings also decreased in size, jumping from 20 participants in 2020 to 10 in 2022
- There was a 25% increase in one-to-one remote meetings and a 49% increase in spontaneous one-to-one meetings
These statistics align with remote work norms — employees have more opportunities to engage virtually, just in shorter spurts. But, contrary to popular claims that remote work has diminished moment-to-moment collaboration, they are also engaging in more spontaneous remote gatherings.
At a time where many employees are working remotely, at least some of the time, it makes sense that they would spend more time getting together with colleagues one-on-one. Lacking face time and the ability to ask questions in real-time, employees are relying on spontaneous calls and one-to-one meetings to quickly reach their remote coworkers.
So, if organizations begin to push a no meeting culture, this kind of spontaneous collaboration may fall to the wayside.
What Meeting ‘Subtraction’ Means for CX
While not all companies are considering putting an end to meetings, Shopify’s subtraction policy does point to a shift in remote and in-person collaboration. Although some meetings foster genuine connection and prompt productivity, others can feel like a waste of company time. So taking real measures to improve meetings for the better is obviously a good idea.
What’s concerning, from the customer service perspective, however, is not a lack of collaboration between team members, but a growing disconnect between departments. In the survey on the cost of unnecessary meetings, 41% of employees felt they could skip meetings held by a leader in another department. At a time when data and information silos continue to disrupt the customer experience, this lack of collaboration seems harmful.
In fact, in CCW Digital’s latest Market Study, 63% of contact center leaders shared that they struggle with a lack of buy-in or collaboration with other departments. If companies encourage a reduction in regular communication to ensure maximum individual productivity, customer experience teams will be negatively impacted. Further, critical insights from customer data will likely remain siloed, keeping organizations from making the improvement customers are desperately seeking.
While there are clearly benefits to limiting unproductive and unnecessary meetings, a no meetings policy might discourage employees from setting aside much needed time if strictly enforced. Therefore, companies should proceed with caution when making any sweeping changes. Creating a framework that discourages unnecessary meetings should certainly be a priority for companies in the remote and hybrid environment, but keeping spontaneous connection and critical communication at the forefront will ensure a more productive and engaged workforce.
