Two years of an average worker’s life is spent preparing for, and attending meetings

Britain’s office workers are spending around 25% of their working week preparing for, and attending meetings, according to new report commissioned by eShare.

The survey of 1,005 office workers, undertaken by TLF Research, shows the average worker attending 3.7 meetings every week, with just over an hour spent preparing for each meeting and almost an hour and a half actually attending it.

This means, a total of 17,470 hours, across a 40 year career, equates to two years of someone’s life or around 10 years of work-time.

“Meetings are an integral part of business life, but many are inefficient, with incorrect agendas and attendees unable to locate the required background information when they need it,” said Alister Esam, CEO of eShare, a tech firm helping organisations to migrate their board meetings information and company data online for better governance. 

“With the average office worker spending more than a day every week on meetings, addressing the waste of hours resulting from ineffective and inefficient meetings could be the single biggest boost to productivity for any organisation.”

One in five office workers still attend meetings with agendas and other materials printed out on paper, highlighting security concerns of what happens after the meeting ends – 11% admit throwing  away the printed materials. 

In response to the results, eShare launched a new app called MeetingSquared for anyone who organises or attends meetings, which looks to bring an end to the inefficient preparation, scheduling and management of meetings.

MeetingSquared app aims to save time and resource wherever it is used.  

Alister says: “Meetings are an elephant in the room within business – many are inefficient, take too long to prepare for and don’t run smoothly when they are under way.

“Anyone attending a meeting must have the relevant emails, documents and agenda available on their device, and be able to annotate and share those with ease. 

“Other areas of business have been brought up-to-date in terms of attitudes and technology, and it is high time that meetings did the same.”