A message from Fellow's CEO
For several years now, we’ve all been talking about the “future of work” in an increasingly remote world. However, it’s safe to say that the future of work is here and that means our work culture needs to evolve to adapt.
Research shows that meeting loads have only risen. Since before the pandemic, time spent in meetings has tripled, according to Microsoft¹, as work has shifted to be increasingly hybrid and remote.
In a remote setting, meetings are the focal point of how your team collaborates and makes decisions. Your employees are your company’s greatest resource, and it’s crucial to understand how they spend their time to assess the total health of your organization.
This new era isn’t just about defining a new normal — it’s also about how AI has ushered in new tools for operational efficiency. Artificial intelligence has revolutionized the tools available to us when it comes to meeting management and efficiency.
We’ve pulled data from more than 30,000 organizations to find out what this new era of meetings looks like. The data shows that while changes are being made, old habits from the days of only meeting in person are enduring, and have even been exacerbated.
This report is here to help you understand the current meeting landscape and set benchmarks for what’s working and what needs improvement. For leaders, this is a thorough breakdown of data that can guide your organization’s meeting practices.
Let's cultivate a meeting culture that doesn't just take time, but makes time — for breakthroughs, for progress, for more of what truly matters.
Aydin Mirzaee, CEO of Fellow
The research is clear: no one likes when there are too many meetings.
A survey from Atlassian² found that 78% of workers say they’re expected to attend too many meetings. We also know that meeting overload is detrimental to both morale and productivity.
The same survey found that just over half of workers said they had to work overtime to make up for hours lost to meetings — and that rises to 67% for those at a director level or higher.
Worse, all these meetings aren’t necessarily producing better organizational results. Other surveys³ have found that 65% of senior managers say meetings keep them from completing their own work and 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient. Most also said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.
Meetings aren’t inherently a bad thing. At their best, they’re an ideal opportunity to align on goals, build relationships, and make key decisions. However, your meeting culture must be built to ensure time spent in meetings is effective and intentional.
In this section, we look at trends around just how much time we’re spending in meetings. For example, did you know Tuesday is the most popular day for meetings? We’ll also see how factors like location, department, and organization size affect these statistics.
Time spent in meetings varies by geographical location in ways you might not expect, based on work culture norms in different countries. For example, US workers spend the highest percentage of their week in meetings, and that’s true across all seniority levels.
US workers are spending at least 20% of their week in meetings, and that rises to 35% for senior leaders.
Average percentage of work week spent in meetings
By job title seniority, comparison across geographical regions
% of week spent in meetings
Australia sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, where no workers, at any level of seniority, are spending more than 30% of their week in meetings.
Canada also stands out because that is where C-suite leaders have the most meetings. While the US was highest overall across seniority levels, C-suite leaders in Canada spend 36% of their week in meetings. C-suite leaders in the US, Europe, and UK aren’t far behind, both spending at least 30% of their week in meetings.
Business size also has an impact on meeting load — and this remains true across all regions. As a company grows, so does its meeting load.
Average percentage of work week spent in meetings
By company size and region
% of week spent in meetings
As organizations grow, so does the time spent in meetings each week, with the biggest impact seen when a company scales beyond 1,000 employees.
Average percentage of work week spent in meetings
By job title seniority and company size
% of week spent in meetings
As companies grow, there are more teams and more people to meet with to keep information flowing and facilitate decision-making.
The impact is greater the higher an employee’s seniority. For individual contributors, meeting load only increases by 4% when a company grows from below 10 employees to above 1,000 employees. For VP and C-suite level leaders, their meeting load more than doubles.
However, the data also shows that once an organization has more than 200 employees, individual contributors are spending 20% of their time in meetings. Managers spend 25% of their time in meetings and senior leaders at larger companies spend 40% or more of their time in meetings.
This data suggests that leaders need to keep a close eye on meeting load as their company grows. It’s common for the number of meetings to creep higher as employees are added, so it’s a smart move to regularly audit your organization’s meeting load, including directing managers to perform these audits on their own teams each quarter. Which meetings aren’t producing results? Which meetings have too many people to be efficient? Which meetings would be more efficient if performed asynchronously?
Across all organization sizes, Tuesdays are the most popular day for meetings, followed by Thursday, then Wednesday. This leaves little time for execution and deep work on these days.
Weekly distribution of meetings
By company size
hours / week
Internal meeting volume — the kind most within our control — varies depending on an employee’s role in an organization. That doesn’t mean some departments are worse at managing their time — quite the opposite.
Hours per week spent in internal meetings
By department and company size
hours / week
For those in human resources, for example, meetings are a key part of the job and therefore we see the second-highest number of hours spent in meetings here, just behind quality assurance.
Customer success and sales employees also see a higher volume of external calls — but that’s a good thing! It means they’re connecting with customers and working toward their goals. On the flip side, quality assurance has the most internal meetings.
Another interesting outlier is those in operations and logistics. Their meeting load is much higher when a company reaches enterprise status because there is more to manage at a larger organization. On average, those in operations and logistics at the largest companies spend four more hours per week in meetings compared to medium-sized companies, as well as 2.5 more hours per week than colleagues in other departments.
Let's take a closer look at the quality of meetings we’re having and the markers of what makes a meeting efficient and productive.
In the simplest terms, an efficient meeting is one where the discussion stays on track and the goal that was set out for the meeting is achieved, whether that’s to make an important decision or move a project forward.
Achieving that isn’t just a matter of sticking to an agenda — there are best practices surrounding number of attendees, meeting length, and considerations for external vs. internal meetings that can set a meeting up for success.
Is there such a thing as too many attendees in a meeting? For something like a company-wide Town Hall, the answer is no — invite away! But for focused meetings where decisions need to be made, there is a cutoff.
According to a study conducted by Robert Sutton, a professor of organizational behaviour at Stanford University⁴, meetings risk being inefficient when there are eight or more attendees. That’s the tipping point where there’s too many people to stay on track, not everyone gets adequate time to speak, and tough topics are pushed aside.
Our data shows that as a company’s size grows, so does the number of meetings with too many attendees. Based on the rule of “seven or fewer attendees,” large companies have 22% of meetings that are at risk of being inefficient.
Average attendees per meeting
Percentage of group meetings by company size
A good rule of thumb is that group meetings are for decision-making, and you need a focused group of attendees to achieve that. If large meetings are being used as more of a forum for sharing information, consider finding ways to share that information asynchronously, either with documentation or by sharing meeting notes and recordings with the larger group after a focused group meets.
Hours per week spent in internal meetings with 8 or more attendees
By department and company size
hours / week
Looking at departments, quality assurance is the most likely to have larger meetings with 8 to 10 attendees, followed by operations and logistics. These are teams that might be having large scrum-style meetings, which may involve the whole team. If these meetings aren’t efficient, consider splitting into smaller groups and improving information dissemination practices.
Often, not much thought is put into the length of meetings when we schedule them. Most calendar apps will default to 30-minute increments and it’s all too easy to simply set a 30 or 60-minute meeting slot.
The problem with that is not all meetings need that much time. In fact, according to Parkinson’s Law⁵, people tend to fill whatever time is allotted for a particular task. That means team members will keep talking to fill a 30 or 60-minute meeting, even if it actually takes less time to accomplish the goals of a given meeting agenda.
The goal of a meeting will always ultimately dictate how long is needed, but it’s been suggested by Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro Method⁶ that 25 minutes is optimal for retaining focus.
With that in mind, we looked at who is booking meetings that are over 30 minutes long and found that it’s actually medium-sized companies — 200 to 999 employees — who book the most meetings at this length.
Average percentage of internal meetings that are 30min or longer
By company size and region
% of meetings
When it comes to meetings at or over over the hour mark, it’s the largest companies that book the most of these. Again, we’re seeing how meeting load — including attendees, volume, and now, length — creeps up as a company scales.
Average percentage of internal meetings that are 60min or longer
By company size and region
% of meetings
On average, 50% to 60% of all meetings we attend are internal, meaning there are no attendees from outside the organization. It’s natural for this to vary across teams as customer-facing departments are more likely to have a high volume of external meetings.
Average percentage of internal and external meetings
By company size
Across the board, however, what this means is that if an organization wants to improve its meeting culture and efficiency, internal meetings are where the focus needs to be. With external meetings, there is often less control over the attendees, the length of the meeting, and how often they need to happen. But with internal meetings, there is more opportunity to improve meeting practices.
Average percentage meetings booked by host's seniority
By company size
As to who is booking these meetings, an average of 60% of meetings are booked by senior leaders.
Average percentage of meetings booked by director or higher
By department and company size
% of meetings
Beyond customer-facing departments, operations leaders book more meetings — both internal and external — than leaders in other departments.
One-on-ones are some of the most important meetings that happen at any company. These are an opportunity to nurture talent, accelerate career development, and address blockers on an individual level.
One-on-ones can represent a significant portion of your internal meetings. Because they’re so frequent, it’s especially important that they be collaborative, well-structured, and a good use of time. However, when one-on-ones are too frequent or inefficient, they can drag down productivity and distract teams that also need to be in external calls, such as customer success teams.
Our data shows that sales and customer success team members are spending on average 10% of their week in one-on-one meetings, or 4 hours per week.
Average hours per week spent on in 1-on-1 meetings
By department and seniority
hours / week
Those in human resources also spend on average 10% of their weeks in one-on-one meetings, however, the nature of their job requires confidential meetings, often with a single employee. In this case, one-on-ones are an efficient and expected use of time.
Seniority has an impact on the number of one-on-ones we attend. For every step you take up the corporate ladder, the more one-on-ones you’ll likely have, with VP and C-suite leaders having the highest load. Moving up in a company also means gaining new teams and direct reports, necessitating more time dedicated to one-on-ones. Leaders should examine the frequency and quality of their one-on-ones to ensure they’re having a meaningful impact.
Average hours per week spent in 1-on-1 meetings
By seniority and company size
hours / week
According to research by professor Steven G. Rogelberg, author of The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance⁷, only about half of our meeting time is effective, well used, and engaging — and that drops even lower for remote meetings.
A huge factor in the effectiveness of meeting time is preparation. When attendees arrive unprepared, precious minutes are wasted getting everyone up to speed on what the meeting is actually about, as well as any background information required. Rather than tackling decisions and making progress, you’re stuck spinning your wheels.
Not only is that a waste of time, it’s a waste of company resources. Employees are your company’s greatest resource and a large investment and when they attend meetings where no progress is made, that hurts your bottom line.
In order to prepare adequately for meetings, employees need to be given adequate notice as well as any information required to come armed with knowledge and ideas. If it seems like your ad hoc meetings are the most chaotic, that’s no coincidence — the more time you have to prepare for a meeting, the better the results will be.
Here, we’ll look at trends surrounding how meetings are booked — notice given, who’s booking these meetings, and which departments are falling behind.
According to Harvard Business School' lecturer Julia Austin⁸, the best practice for meeting notice is to schedule meetings with at least 24-hours’ notice — although the more notice given, the better. That time is important for allowing attendees to fully read and contribute to the agenda, gather any resources or information required, and arrive ready to dive in.
Consider your human resources team the internal trendsetter for booking meetings with adequate notice of at least one day.
Average percentage of meetings booked with at least 24hr notice
By department and company size
% of meetings
Of course, last-minute meetings do happen. For human resources, for example, a crisis could necessitate hastily-booked meetings. However, if you get into the habit of giving enough notice when you do have to book something last-minute, invitees will understand there must be a sense of urgency and will be more likely to accept the interruption.
The needs and work styles of various departments differ, and some are more prone to last-minute meeting invitations than others.
Average percentage of meetings booked with less than 1hr notice
By department and company size
% of meetings
Across every organization size, product management teams are the most likely to book a meeting with less than one hour’s notice. These meetings may be set too quickly to address a blocker, since these are teams that must move with agility. In fact, 40% of all product management meetings are booked with less than 24 hours notice — the highest of any department.
Average percentage of meetings booked with less than 24hr notice
By department and company size
% of meetings
AI tools have been developed and deployed for nearly all aspects of how we work, and meetings are no exception.
AI for meetings started out with AI bots that would simply transcribe a call. Now, AI is much smarter and can act as a complete meeting assistant, doing everything from noting action items and decisions, to seamlessly summarizing and chapterizing your meetings.
Advances in AI technology mean that even subtle language cues and vital context won’t be missed thanks to highly-accurate transcription. AI can understand the difference between a talking point and a decision made, which means you’re free to carry on the conversation while AI takes care of all the administrative details.
In this section we’ll take a closer look at AI usage for meetings and how teams have embraced it in 2024.
Between January and August 2024, AI usage for meetings in our data set grew 17X. With the deluge of emerging AI technology and tools, users will only stick with what proves useful. This data shows that AI for meetings has been consistently beneficial to meeting workflows. With multiple opportunities per week to use AI for meetings, this continued growth proves the tangible productivity gains from using AI in this context.
Percentage of Fellow meetings with a recording of 5 minutes or longer
By company size
Smaller organizations are embracing AI meeting management at a faster rate than larger organizations. Our data shows that AI usage has grown 19X for smaller companies, compared to 13X for large companies. This could be due to the thorough processes for AI governance a large organization has when adopting new technology and tools which may slow down adoption. A large company (1,000+ employees) will have a higher meeting load and more to consider around privacy and protocols.
Still, the data shows that regardless of organization size, AI meeting assistance has grown as this technology improves. We can also see the growth of AI usage is consistent across geographical regions.
Before a meeting, AI can help prepare an agenda, brief you on who you’re meeting with, and offer insights from your last call to guide the next conversation. During a meeting, AI can take your meeting notes, capture action items and decisions, and guide next steps.
Where we’re seeing the most interaction with AI meeting management is after calls. AI is able to record, transcribe, and summarize every meeting, providing a detailed recap once it has ended. We’re particularly seeing the use of generative, conversational AI to query that information with questions such as when decisions were made or who said what.
Citations
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/13/1156610135/since-the-pandemic-began-is-it-better-to-have-more-meetings-at-work-or-none-at-a
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/workplace-woes-meetings
https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-the-meeting-madness
https://hbr.org/2018/06/the-most-productive-meetings-have-fewer-than-8-people
https://asana.com/resources/parkinsons-law
https://friend.ucsd.edu/reasonableexpectations/downloads/Cirillo%20--%20Pomodoro%20Technique.pdf
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-surprising-science-behind-successful-remote-meetings/
https://beingfa.com/2018/02/19/mastering-the-team-meeting/
Remote and hybrid work is here to stay. While companies are still tinkering with exactly how to balance days in and out of the office, meetings are increasingly a virtual-first part of work.
It would be a mistake to simply carry over in-person meeting habits into this remote-first world but the only way to understand how to make a successful transition is to see the data behind how we meet. This report shows how many factors influence the efficiency of our meetings, and how company shifts such as growth can impact how we meet.
Fellow is on a mission to solve the meeting problem with meetings that:
Are only as long as they need to be
Don’t have excess attendees
Are planned in advance
Are made more strategic and efficient with AI technology
With tools like Fellow available to achieve a healthy, productive meeting culture, it’s just a matter of leaders taking charge to foster that shift.
With Fellow, there’s no need to wait. The future of meetings is here.