These meeting statistics are from a variety of academic research studies, lists, and polls. The aggregated numbers address unproductive meetings statistics, statistics on time spent in meetings, and the statistical cost of meetings.

The State of Meetings in 2020

Clockwise – Matt Martin

February 10, 2020

Meeting statistics come from a survey of 757 workers in the US conducted through SurveyMonkey.

When asked “What’s your favorite day for a meeting?” the largest group chose Tuesday (29%), followed closely by Wednesday (25%). Alternately almost half of respondents (47%) felt that Monday was the worst day for a meeting, with most of the remainder (40%) choosing Friday.
Arriving late is considered the biggest meeting “taboo” across every generation and in every industry. Younger generations were 15% less likely to be bothered by cell phone usage, but 10% more likely to be bothered by people eating in meetings.
The number one choice for the biggest meeting challenge is off-topic conversations.
More than three quarters of people (78%) feel that their meeting schedule is either always or sometimes out of control and most blame their crazy meeting schedules upper management (38%) or their direct manager (16%).
The top activities selected that people would “rather do than attend a bad meeting” are: go to the dentist, talk politics at family dinner, watch C-SPAN in a waiting room, and call Comcast.
The top reason people selected as the best way to get them excited about attending a meeting is for it to be well-planned (64%). The exception to this is for younger generations (18-29 year olds) who said it was a free lunch (71%).
Scheduled meetings were seen as the fourth most common cause of interruptions, after co-worker “drive-by”s, email notifications, and office chatter, but before social media.

The rise of 30-minute meetings and other ways collaboration is changing

Microsoft – Heather Layne, Giancarlo Cozzi

April 15, 2020

To arrive at these meeting stats, examined the changes in interaction within the 300-person organization during the COVID -19 driven shift to working from home by using data drawn from Workplace Analytics, coupled with “anecdotal sentiment.”

After shifting to working from home, weekly meeting time suddenly jumped 10%. This translates to an average of three additional meetings per week per employee.
Roughly 70% of employees experienced at least some increase in meetings.
The increase in meetings was not function specific, but occurred across the engineering, product, and business teams.
The amount of short meetings (30 minutes or less) increased 22 % while the amount of long meetings (greater than 1 hour) decreased by 11%.
One-on-one meetings increased by 18% and check-ins and team social meetings grew by 10%, with half of these new meetings taking place on a recurring basis.

The State Of Enterprise Work 2019 U.S. EDITION

Workfront, 2019

Twenty-one percent of workers say the single biggest thing that would help them do more with less is having fewer meetings to get through the week.
Workers say 10% of their week is taken up by useful and/ or productive meetings, while almost the same amount (8%) is made up of wasteful meetings.
Sixty-two percent said wasteful meetings get in the way of work. (Respondents could chose more than one answer.)
When asked how they expect work to change in the next 5 years, 34% selected “Companies will widely adopt virtual reality tech for long distance meetings so workers will feel like they’re present in those meetings” (Respondents could chose more than one answer.)

meeting statistics 2020

New survey explores the changing landscape of teamwork

Microsoft – Lori Wright and Natalie McCullough

April 19, 2018

Microsoft collaborated with YouGov to administer an online survey in January/February 2018 across seven countries (United States. United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, and Canada) . The 14,371 participants were ages 18 to 59 and were full time higher-education students or full time employed.

To collaborate at work, Baby Boomers are most likely to use in-person meetings, while Gen X and Millennials use emails and Gen Z use chats.
People rate in-person meetings as the communication mode that makes them the happiest.
Baby Boomers feel in-person meetings is the communication mode that makes them the happiest the most strongly (85%), Gen X and Millennials less so (71% and 62%, respectively) and Gen Z least so (46%).
Gen Z rate chat almost as favorably as an in-person meeting (46% vs. 40%).
Remote and non-remote workers value in-person meetings almost equally (47.11% vs 46.67%). By generation, however, this equivalence only holds for Gen X and Millenials. For Baby Boomers, remote workers value in-person meetings more (51.38% vs. 47.51%), while for Gen Z, remote workers value them less (47.91% vs. 50.58%).

State of Meetings at work – The Results

Beenote – Louis Turmel

September 18, 2017

Attempts to “measure the current state of the meeting at work” came from “questioning more than 1,300 people.”

Almost half of respondents had meetings several times a week (48%), while the remainder split between between those with meetings everyday (21%) and those with meetings several times a month (29%), with only a small group (2%) having meetings less than once a month.
Slightly over half (54%) of meetings have 4-6 participants, roughly a quarter (27%) have 7-10, around an eighth (12%) have less than 3, and just over a sixteenth (7%) have 11-25..
For the average length of meetings, 49% were between 30 minutes – 1 hour, 37% were 1-2 hours, 7% were less than 30 minutes, and another 7% were over 2 hours.
In general, respondents consider meetings to be helpful (39% ) and necessary (35%).
The majority of respondents consider meetings to have a positive impact on their projects (83%), while 14% feel they have no impact and 2% feel that meetings slow down the project.
Nearly 80% indicated that they had problems in one or many stages of the meeting life cycle.
The five main meeting problems are: lack of participant preparation (28%), poor communication (20%), time allocated is not observed (17%), no follow-up on tasks (25%) and no minutes (13%).

meeting stats 2019

State of the Modern Meeting 2018

Blue Jeans Network by Verizon

2018

Meeting statistics: A total of 906 people completed the survey with 302 respondents each from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. For each country, at least 100 were employed in the IT department and 200 were employed in non-IT departments. The sample and survey were facilitated by Market Cube, an independent research panel company.

The types of meetings respondents have on a regular basis include: internal collaborations and meetings (73%); external meetings with customers, vendors, or partners (56%); presentations (57%); events and webinars (42%); and training (51%).
Sixty-four percent of employees are having more meetings than they were 12 months ago, with 43% of employees experiencing an increase in spontaneous meetings.
Sixty-one percent of people prefer to meet with others in person (30% much prefer face to face meetings and 31% somewhat prefer them). Alternately, 14% somewhat prefer digital meetings and 3% much prefer them. Twenty-three percent have no preference.
In an average week, respondents meet in a huddle room (in-person or digitally): one time (21%), 2-5 times (33%); 6-10 times (13%); or 11+ times (7%).
Seventy-nine percent of employees believe that using video for a meeting allows them to participate more fully than if they were simply participating over an audio only conference call or web conferencing solution.
The problems that pose the greatest barrier to virtual meeting productivity are: inconsistent experience across desktop, mobile and room system (49%); fails to deliver clear audio for all meeting participants (45%); and the inability to easily and quickly join a meeting from any device or room (42%).

Meeting stats: Productivity At The Office – Challenges 2015

Jabra, 2015

A sample of just under 2.449 responses represents populations of office workers gathered in 10 different countries for these meeting stats. The largest share is from the USA, less are from European countries, Russia and Asia. The Jabra ‘Productivity of Office Workers’ study was conducted in May 2015 in collaboration with Lindberg International.

Twenty-six percent of knowledge workers said too many meetings in person or online was an issue that negatively impacts productivity at work.
Workers spent 10% of an average week in meetings.
While the majority of knowledge workers feel attending meetings benefits their personal productivity, either to a high extent (9%) or to some extent (55%), 36% feel they diminish it, 30% to some extent and 6% to a high extent.
Issues that prevent meetings from adding (more) to productivity include: discussions without direction (51%), lack of decision making (32%), lack of follow-up (31%), lack op preparation (26%), delays due to late arrivals (25%), lack of involvement (23%), no objective/agenda (19%), too many distractions (9%), delays due to IT issues (9%), poor audio quality (8%), poor language skills (4%), and lack of relevant tools (4%).

Work Management Survey 2015 – Executive Summary and Full Report: Meeting Statistics

Wrike, 2015

These meeting stats come from Wrike, who surveyed over 1,464 business professionals to find out more about how they get work done at their companies today and what they expect in the future.

When asked about about their biggest productivity roadblocks, 24% said too many meetings or conference calls.
Half of all workers attend approximately 2-5 meetings each week (either virtual or in-person), while the others attend 0-1 (16%), 6-10 (24%), or more than 10 (10%).
A little over 34% of workers attend six or more meetings a week. For respondents who are unhappy with their work management process, the number of people who attend at least six meetings a week jumps to 40%.
46% of respondents say that “most” or “all” of their meetings focus on project status updates.
When asked how often they leave a meeting with a clear understanding of what to do next, 46% of participants answered with “some of the time,” “rarely,” or “never.” Only 54% say they leave a meeting with a clear understanding of what to do next “most of the time” or “always.”
A total of 46% say “most” or “all” of their meetings focus on project status updates.
The frequency that people actually contribute to the meetings they attend include all of the time (39%), most of the time (41%), some of the time (16%), rarely (3%), and never (1%).

Klaxoon’s study reveals insights on the future of teamwork in America

Klaxoon – July 16, 2019

To seek out an even better understanding of teamwork in the USA, Klaxoon commissioned a Teamwork in America Survey. The study conducted by Propeller Insights among over 2,000 workers across the US, sought to get to the heart of trends in teamwork, collaboration, meetings, remote work, future of work, and digital transformation happening in America today.

41% of workers attended more meetings in the last year while only 14% took part in fewer meetings.
63% of employees state that there are more attendees present in meetings.
Meeting trends are more pronounced in certain cities. San Francisco, Washington DC, and NYC lead the way in the US with the greatest increase in meetings attended over the past year, while Austin saw the biggest upswing in meeting participants.
89% of meetings in America last less than an hour.
The factors that influence decision-making the most in meetings across America include: best idea (38%), group think (29%), upper management (25%), and team vote (9%).
An overwhelming 79% in America agreed that conversations and most ideas in meetings were driven by one or two team members. This pattern of poor collaboration is most rampant in San Francisco and Seattle, 88% and 85% respectively.

Collaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work (meeting stats)

National Bureau Of Economic Research – Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Raffaella

July 2020

This paper provides the first large scale analysis of how digital communication patterns have changed in the early stages of the pandemic. To study this question, we acquired de-identified, aggregated meta-data from an information technology services provider that licenses digital communications solutions to organizations around the world. We use aggregated digital meta-data on emails and meetings for 3,143,270 users across 21,478 de-identified firms in 16 large metropolitan areas, aggregated by the provider to the level of Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and day, across all available firms.

Compared to pre- pandemic levels:

The number of meetings per person has increased 12.9%.
The number of attendees per meeting has increased 13.5%.
The average length of meetings has decreases 20.1%.
The length of time between the first and last email or meeting of a day extended 8.2%, or 48.5 minutes.
The net effect is that people spent less time in meetings per day 11.5% in the post- lockdown period.

Enterprise Conferencing User Behavior & Impact Report

LoopUp, 2018

LoopUp sought to better understand the realities of conference calling in the enterprise, and commissioned Sapio Research to survey 1,000 frequent users in the United States and United Kingdom about their conference call practices and the challenges they regularly encounter when hosting remote meetings. Respondents participate in at least one conference call per week, and work at companies ranging in size from no less than 50 employees, to over 1,000 employees.

Over 70% of conference calls are taken from fixed-line phones, either desk phones (33%) or conference phones in meeting rooms (37%). Only 22% of people regularly take conference calls from their mobile device, and only 7% regularly join via voice-over-IP (VoIP).
Conference calls present a significant overlooked security gap with 70% reporting that it’s quite normal to discuss confidential information on conference calls even though 50% report that it’s also normal not to know who’s on those calls.
66% of respondents used the same passcodes to dial in to conference calls for a year or more.
While 88% believe that video conferencing has a place in certain situations such as interviews and training, only 53% thought it was useful for day-to-day meetings.
88% of respondents do not feel as comfortable on video calls as they do on audio calls.
Approximately 15 minutes are wasted in conference call meetings, with an average of 8.7 minutes wasted getting started and 6.6 minutes wasted on distractions during the calls.

2018 Workplace Distraction Report

Udemy, 2018

The survey was conducted online by Toluna Group on behalf of Udemy in February 2018 among 1,000+ U.S. office workers in full-time jobs who are ages 18 or older. Complete survey methodology available upon request.

60% of our survey respondents said meetings are just another distraction from the work they need to complete.
Disruptions in meetings include: small talk and office gossip (54%), late arrivals/early departures (37%), side discussion about other projects (45%), and technology/connectivity problems (33%).
23% of respondents selected regular “no meetings” days as a way for their employer to reduce workplace distraction.

meeting statistics 2018

Working or Wasting Time? Korn Ferry Survey Shows Too Many Meetings and Calls are Preventing Professionals from Getting the Job Done

Korn Ferry – Tracy Kurschner

November 13, 2019

The information is from a survey of 1,945 professionals took place in October and November 2019.

More than two-thirds (67%) of respondents say that spending too much time in meetings and on calls distracts them from making an impact at work.
Only 16% say meetings and calls have the greatest impact at work, compared to 64% who say 1:1 conversations with a colleague have the greatest impact.
More than a third (34%) say they waste between 1-2 hours per week on unproductive calls or meetings and the same amount say they waste between 2-5 hours. About half that amount (15%) say they waste between 5-10 hours and 6% waste more than 10 hours. Only 11% say that all their meetings and calls are productive.
Thirty-five percent say that they’d go to a meeting even if they knew it wasn’t going to be productive, instead of declining the meeting.

Time Spent (And Wasted) In Meetings

Accountemps

July 30, 2018

Accountemps surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. workers age 18 and older who work in an office environment, and more than 2,000 finance leaders in more than 20 of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas.

On average, workers spend 21% of their time in meetings
Workers say that, on average, 25% of time in meetings is wasted
On average, finance leaders spend 24% of their time in meetings
finance leaders say, on average, 21% of time in meetings is wasted.
The top responses from workers on the most common issues in meetings are: starts or ends late (66%); it’s unnecessary (e.g., could’ve been handled over email) (63%); too much or not enough time allotted (57%); attendees distracted (using phone, checking email, doodling, etc.) (57%); attendees interrupt each other (55%); not sticking to an agenda when one is provided (49%); and attendees unprepared (47%). (Multiple responses were allowed.)
On average, finance leaders spend 20% of time in meetings conducted via an online platform.
Thirty-six percent of workers admit they are less engaged during remote meetings.
Forty-seven percent of finance leaders said they are less engaged during virtual meetings with their staff.

Clarizen Survey: Workers Consider Status Meetings a Productivity-Killing Waste of Time

Clarizen

January 22, 2015

The survey was conducted online within the United States from November 20-24, 2014 among 2,066 adults ages 18 and older (among which 1,005 are employed), by Harris Poll on behalf of Clarizen via its Quick Query omnibus product. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

60% of status meeting attendees reported that preparing for a status meeting takes longer than the meeting itself (4.6 hours vs. 4.5 hours).
46% of employed Americans would rather do any unpleasant activity than sit in a status meeting, including: opting for a trip to the DMV (18%), choosing to watch paint dry (17%), commute 4 hours to and from work (12%), endure a root canal (8%), get a mullet hairstyle (7%), move to Antarctica (6%), or some other unpleasant activity (13%).
35% of status meeting attendees called status meetings “a waste of my time.”
3 out of 5 workers reported that they multitask during status meetings.

Stop the Meeting Madness; management meeting stats

July–August 2017
Harvard Business Review

We surveyed 182 senior managers in a range of industries:

65% said meetings keep them from completing their own work.
71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.
64% said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.
62% said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team closer together

At a financial and regulatory consultancy we studied, for example, three months after managers began to rethink the firm’s approach to meetings, a survey showed that employees perceived significant improvements in

team collaboration (a 42% increase)
psychological safety to speak up and express opinions (a 32% increase)
team performance (a 28% increase)
ratings of satisfaction with work/life balance rose from 62% to 92%

In a recent survey we conducted with nearly 200 senior executives from diverse industries, only 17% reported that their meetings are generally productive uses of group and individual time.

Meetings suck and bad ones will cost enterprises $399 billion in 2019, says Doodle

January 10, 2019

Doodle, the meeting scheduling platform, interviewed more than 6,500 customers in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and UK as well as examined 19 million meetings arranged in 2018.

Pointless meetings are costing companies and business professionals time and money–$399 billion in 2019 in the U.S.
Professionals spend 2 hours a week, or 13 days a year, in pointless meetings;
The average business pro spends three hours a week in meetings;
24 billion hours will be lost to meetings in 2019;
34 percent of American workers consider unnecessary meetings to be the biggest costs to their companies;
70 percent of respondents prefer morning meetings and 76 percent wanted face-to-face meetings.

unproductive meetings statistics

The State of Meetings 2019; meeting statistics from the UK, Germany, and the USA

A new report from the world’s leading scheduling platform, Doodle, interviewed over 6,500 professionals across the UK, Germany and the USA and examined 19 million meetings arranged through its platform in 2018.

Professionals spend 2 hours a week in pointless meetings, which will add up to over $541bn worth of resource in 2019
The average professional spends three hours a week in meetings – making two thirds of all meetings unnecessary or a waste of time
Cumulatively, 24bn hours will be lost to pointless meetings in the next year
More than a third (37%) of professionals consider unnecessary meetings to be the biggest cost to their organisation
76% of professionals prefer face to face meetings to calls or video chats
Mornings are overwhelmingly the best time to hold a meeting – with 70% of professionals preferring meetings between 8am and 12pm
Delving deeper into the specific personal impact, over a quarter (26%) stated that poorly organised meetings impacted their client relationships, while others feel they create confusion in the workplace (43%), and impact their ability to actually do their work (44%).
Supporting this is the finding that a third (33%) of professionals find themselves unable to contribute to most of the meetings they attend – suggesting over-invitation is a major waste of time at work.
What makes for a good meeting?
- Setting clear objectives – 72%
- Setting a clear agenda – 67%
- Not having too many people in the room – 35%

What makes a bad meeting?
- People taking phone calls or texting during meetings – 55%
- Participants interrupting each other – 50%
- People not listening to the contributions of others – 49%
- People arriving late or leaving early – 49%
- People talking about nothing for long periods of time – 46%

statistics on time spent in meetings

Doodle – The State of Meetings Report 2019

The state of meetings report comprises data from three sources – an in-depth Nielsen study of 1,000 professionals (conducted August 2018), a survey of 5,528 professionals form the UK, Switzerland Germany & the USA (conducted October – December 2018), and analysis of over 19 million meeting responses shared via the Doodle platform in 2018.

Meeting face to face is vital, with professionals preferring this method over all other meeting types.
Two thirds of professionals from the UK, Germany and USA all feel that face to face meetings make it easier to make important decisions. 100% of respondents also agreed that face to face meetings help them understand other peoples’ opinions and arguments better.
The average meeting lasts around an hour, with 54% of professionals saying their average meeting takes between 30 minutes and 1 hour.
Meeting length shows a strong correlation to an individual’s level of seniority, with those earning over €51,000 per annum twice as likely to have hour long meetings as those earning less than €28,000 per annum.
Those earning higher salaries also tend to be more active participants in meetings, with just 8% of professionals earning more than €51,000 per annum saying they aren’t usually an active participant in work meetings, compared to 18% of those earning less than €28,000 per annum.
British professionals spend the most time in meetings every week, with nearly a third (30%) of respondents reporting they spend five or more hours in meetings per week. 23% of professionals in the USA spend this time in meetings, while the 23% of German professionals spend 2 and a half hours in meetings every week.
Busy professionals (those attending five or more meetings a week), are also far more likely to actively participate in the discussion — with 70% of busy professionals playing a key role compared to 49% of professionals attending less than five meetings a week.
Our Nielsen research also discovered that 25% of professionals in the USA have more than 15 meetings, catch-ups, calls and internal meetings every week, accounting for 20m working professionals.
Predictably, those spending time in lots of meetings feel improperly attended meetings are the biggest cost to their company, more so than those attending less than five meetings per week.
Interestingly, busy professionals are less fussy about their preferred meeting method. More respondents who attend five or more meetings per week believe that video conferences, conference calls and one on one phone calls can be effective methods of meeting. This likely reflects the fact that they place greater importance on the quality of a meeting’s attendants, rather than the format itself.

Statistics about time spent in meetings:

41% 31–60 mins
39% 16–30 mins
4% 91+ mins
3% 0– 5 mins
13% 61–90 mins

Meetings stats about personal impact:

Nearly two thirds (71%) of professionals lose time every week due to unnecessary or cancelled meetings. More German professionals (74%) reported regularly losing time to poorly organised meetings than those in the UK (72%) or the USA (68%).
This is likely to be a reflection of the fact that Germans tend to be more involved in meetings they attend, with 65% of Germans saying they play an active role in meetings they attend, compared to just 48% of British professionals and 51% of those in the USA.
Professionals losing time due to poorly organized meetings by country:
- 74% – Germany
- 72% – UK
- 68% – USA
100% of respondents described poorly organised meetings as a waste of time or money. The effect of these is felt in a number of ways, with over a quarter (26%) of respondents stating that poorly organised meetings impact their client relationships.
Poorly organised or cancelled meetings pose the biggest time drain to businesses in the UK, with 40% of employees believing this is the biggest threat to their company’s time. 38% of Germans see this as the biggest threat, while 34% of Americans believe it’s the biggest threat to their company.
Consequences of poorly organized meetings:
- 44% – Poorly organised meetings mean I don’t have enough time to do the rest of my work
- 43% – Unclear actions lead to confusion
- 38% – Bad organisation results in a loss of focus on projects
- 31% – Irrelevant attendees slow progress
- 26% – Inefficient processes weaken client/supplier relationships

Rethinking collaboration: true extent of time lost in meetings

November 28, 2018 – To develop these meeting statistics, Circle Research and Barco surveyed nearly 3,000 white-collar workers in Europe, the Pacific, the US, China and India. The research sample was aged between 21 and 65 and was employed across a range of organization sizes, industries, job seniority and roles.

Meeting statistics show employees spend an average of one day a week in meetings, or 50 days a year
51% of employees are invited to meetings that are irrelevant to them, a misuse of time and resources.
37% of workers admit to using whatever technology is necessary to get the job done, even if it’s not secure.
61% of C-suite executives are often unclear what they’re in a meeting to achieve.
One of the report’s most significant findings was the number of meetings people have – on average 10 per week.
The average meeting was found to last 48 minutes.
Ten 48-minute meetings a week adds up to one day, or 50 days a year. The research also revealed that over half (51%) of people are asked to attend meetings that are irrelevant to them. And, in the case of the most highly paid, C-suite executives, 61% are unsure what they’re being asked to achieve when they get there. That’s a lot of expensive, wasted time.
The meeting statistics showed that only 30% of meeting time is spent working towards meeting objectives.
- 11% of time is spent waiting for someone to arrive
- 12% setting up troublesome technology
- 13% discussing topics that are not part of the meeting objectives – including assigning responsibilities such as note taking and deciding what the objectives of the meeting should be.
The majority of employees interviewed across all countries and regions (57%) wanted meetings to be shorter and fewer.

Statistics about the scourge of meeting late-comers

March 20, 2013

Steven Rogelberg and his colleagues attempted to estimate the base rate of meeting lateness via a survey of 195 employees across South-eastern USA, reporting on over 300 meetings.

Participants admitted arriving late an average of 5 per cent of the time. Multiply by the number of attendees at a typical meeting (the average in this sample was 8).
This makes the odds of a single late-comer high and helps explain the finding that 37 per cent of meetings on average started late.
Part of the problem is that people vary in their definition of lateness. In another study, Rogelberg’s team surveyed 665 international participants (average age 37) via StudyResponse.Com with an open-ended question about their understanding of meeting lateness.
Just over a fifth of the sample defined lateness as arriving after the scheduled start time (which was the objective definition used in the survey into the base rate of lateness). Another fifth defined lateness as a certain fixed time after the scheduled start – in other words, they were allowing for a “grace” period, varying from a few minutes to more than ten minutes. Thirty-two per cent defined lateness as arrival after the meeting had actually got underway. Some (6 per cent) defined lateness simply as “keeping others waiting”, or “interrupting the flow” (5 per cent). Finally, a minority (3 per cent) saw lateness in terms of whether a person was “ready to go” once the meeting had started.

Fuze survey reveals U.S. workforce hampered by multitasking and disengagement

January 27, 2014

This poll was conducted exclusively for FuzeBox by SurveyMonkey Audience [hot link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/audience]. The more than 2,000 respondents were randomly selected and are a representative national sample of information workers in the U.S. They completed the online survey on November 19th 20th, 2013. Our reported data has a 3 percent margin of error with a 97 percent confidence level. Because of rounding, some percentages may not add up to 100 percent.

92 percent of U.S. information workers confess to multitasking during meetings; 41 percent admit to doing so often or all the time.
Considering the amount of time we spend in meetings, this is a significant drain on resources and productivity – 52 percent of survey respondents spend 13 hours in meetings weekly and 34 percent spend between 4 and 10 hours in meetings.
Employees admit to a range of multitasking activities during meetings, the most common included checking email (69%), working on unrelated projects (49%) and eating (44%).
At the root of the problem is a lack of face to face communication that holds employees accountable and reduces multitasking. For example, 56 percent say they multitask most often on phone conferences, and that number drops to 16 percent during in person meetings and most significantly to 4 percent during video conferences. Apart from being more engaged during video conferences, employees are also more prepared — 63 percent admitted to spending more time preparing for a video conference call than an in person meeting.
57 percent would travel less and would telecommute more if given the option to video conference, and 67 percent would have deeper engagement with other employees and would feel more comfortable working in remote offices more often.