For many people, meetings are a plague, not because they’re inherently unhelpful, but because in practice they’re often an unproductive waste of time that ends up disrupting the flow of work.
One of the criticisms often levelled at them is that they never start on time and finish after the scheduled time. I’ve often had to deal with this problem, which has sometimes been a real source of stress and pain for me, as I’ve always believed that “being on time is already being late”.
I’m only going to talk about punctuality here , and assume that the meeting has a meaning, a purpose and an objective, that it is well prepared, its duration calibrated to the agenda, well run and that only the necessary people are invited.
The importance of punctuality in meetings
You could start by saying that it’ s only polite to start and finish a meeting on time, whether you’re the organizer or a participant.
But I’m going to look at it from a very operational and organizational angle.
People organize their days according to the tasks they have to do and the meetings they have planned (and sometimes unplanned). An unexpected increase in meeting time means an equal reduction in working time.
Here’s a reminder of the importance of time spent in meetings (Digital Infobesity: When Collaboration Tools Degrade Productivity, QWL and Amplify Mental Workload).
- Employees spend an average of 6 hours 47 minutes a week in meetings.
- Managers, 14h52 per week.
- Executives, around 25h28 per week. The latter can spend up to 32 days a year in a “meeting tunnel” (days with more than 6 hours of meetings).
In addition :
- Employees (at all hierarchical levels) spend around 10 hours 48 minutes a week in meetings.
- 26% of meetings are scheduled at the last minute, resulting in organizational overload.
- On average, meetings include 3.4 participants, but 10% of meetings attended by employees overlap.
And so the price to pay: managers, for example, have only 17% of their working time left to concentrate on individual production tasks.
It’s worth noting that the people who spend the most time in meetings are those who are highest up the organization chart (for good and often bad reasons, in meetings to which they are invited as a matter of principle, just as they are copied on an email so as not to be reproached later), are those whose time is the most precious and expensive.
It’s easy to see their impact on the organization of everyone’s time and productivity, but unfortunately that’s not all.
We underestimate the domino effect of meetings
The person responsible for the delay in a meeting sees, I hope, the impact in terms of politeness (actually not) and the impact on the meeting and each of the participants. But 10 minutes lost in a meeting can become a cataclysm on a business scale.
Imagine someone who has to attend several meetings in a row. A delay, whether it’s due to him or her or not, will disrupt the next meeting, and therefore the agenda of all those taking part. Not only will it start late and end late, but it may also last longer than expected.
This will have an impact on the next one, and so on.
And so it is that the 4pm meeting starts at 5.30pm, finishes at 7pm instead of 6pm, everyone is tired and annoyed, looking at their watches, and all this can be down to one person being late through no fault of their own. But since the person who is the most late is the one who has the most meetings , i.e. the one with the highest hierarchical rank, nobody says anything.
I don’t need to explain to you what cascading delays cost in terms of time, money and mental load for the participants, whether or not they’re involved, since at one point or another they suffer the effects of other people’s delays.
I thought long and hard about a few simple rules that I ended up implementing, knowing – and this is the limit of the matter – that it’s easier when you’re the organizer and/or have the hierarchical weight that means your ways of working impose themselves on others.
1°) No unscheduled meetings
You can’t get organized and make yourself available if everything is done at the last minute. I’m the first to say that time is the scarcest resource and speed the key to success, but there are limits.
Why get 5 people together right away who will either be unavailable or late, or will have to cancel and postpone other meetings when you can do it later?
Of course, there are circumstances that require it, and everyone understands this, but is it really the case all the time? Certainly not.
In any case, piling up meetings that are not followed by action is pointless (What is the point of increasing the pace of meetings without increasing the pace of execution?).
At least when you call an emergency meeting, people will know that it’s really worthwhile and not just because your position in the business allows you to impose anything and everything on them.
Last point: if I want to see one or two people quickly and unexpectedly
1°) I check their agenda
2°) Even if they seem free, I validate with an instant message that I’m not disturbing them.
You can’t imagine how much people appreciate it when you respect their time.
2°) No “back to back” meetings
It’s impossible to end a meeting at 11:00 and start the next one at 11:00. It’s only logical. So we have a quasi-structural delay that can easily be countered by adopting a good practice that can easily become collective.
I only schedule meetings that last less than the normal half-hour or hour slots. 15 minutes, 25 minutes, 50 minutes maximum. This leaves plenty of time for unforeseen events, for changing rooms (even when using videoconferencing), for sending an urgent email after the meeting, and so on.
If I’m having two meetings back-to-back (it’s not the organizers’ fault), I warn them that I’ll be late and to start without me. If I’m essential, we talk about it and either the organizer finds another time or I tell the person from the previous meeting that I’ll have to leave early.
3°) When you’re late, let others know and apologize.
That’s just being polite, but it shows a minimum of respect for others.
Even a simple message 5 minutes beforehand saying “sorry, something came up” avoids making you look like a lout, and at least the organizer knows what to expect.
But showing respect in such circumstances can avoid, in the future, having to deal with negative or even aggressive behavior from people who have spent their time suffering from your lateness and think you don’t care about them.
4°) Start meetings on time
It doesn’t matter whether everyone is there or not, the organizer starts his meeting on time, which means something that is not neutral in terms of exemplarity: everyone has the right to be late except him.
Personally, when someone invites me to meetings and I’m systematically on time and they’re late, you can imagine the professional and even personal image I have of them. And it will be hard to change.
Starting on time already shows respect for those who are there, and I promise you that after the 3rd time everyone will make the effort to arrive on time without thinking that it’s normal to be 10 minutes late.
Personally, I have no problem starting with two people in the room and 5 missing. On one occasion, I even started on my own and announced to the first arrivals that the first item on the agenda had been dealt with without them, and that I’d made a decision on my own due to a lack of people to discuss it with.
I then noticed an impressive rise in the punctuality rate.
5°) No catching up
Latecomers join the meeting as it progresses, and that’s that. We don’t stop to remind them of what’s been said or any decisions taken.
They’ll be satisfied with the minutes, if any are issued.
6°) Meeting ends on time
The meeting ends on time. I’m not saying that we stop talking at the supposed time of the meeting’s end, but that by that time practically everyone should have put their equipment away and be able to leave the room.
If for any reason you feel you need to extend the meeting :
1°) We talk it over: we continue or reschedule something.
2°) Whoever wants to leave leaves without having to justify it : the others continue because they want to and can. And if, by chance, the meeting goes on without the question of whether to continue being asked, he can leave in the same way.
3°) At the end of the meeting, the organizer questions his own organization: did the meeting go badly, was the time allotted too short for the agenda? He may even have things to improve on his own.
And what if the meeting started late for a legitimate reason? Well, it still ends on time, because people probably have obligations right afterwards.
Bottom line
These are good practices that are not so complicated to share and implement on a large scale, and when you start doing them , they often spread.
As a leader and manager, it’s also important to set an example by making it clear that this applies to you too.
Some people will tell me that “you know, at a certain level, it’s complicated for some people to be on time”, to which I reply that when everyone is on time, you stop making these people late, and that one of the first duties of these people is to set an example.
And when there are so many constraints that this is impossible? Well, people need to talk to each other and coordinate, but if we apply the rules properly, we’ll have to deal with fewer exceptions.
In the workplace, respecting other people’s time means respecting everyone else’s , and I could go on and on about this…but this article is already too long.
What about you? How do you enforce punctuality at meetings? How do you feel about other people’s lack of punctuality?
The comments are open to you.
