What Meeting Data Tells Us About Hybrid Work Culture

Implementing “meeting-free” days has been successful for many organizations

Vyopta analyzed over 48 million meetings held in 2020, 2021, and 2022 by enterprise knowledge workers on virtual meeting platforms (Microsoft Teams, Webex, Zoom, and others). This data helped identify emerging trends in hybrid work culture over the past three years. These trends offer novel insight into the factors affecting effective hybrid collaboration.
 

The periods comprise three 6-week snapshots of time from 2020, 2021, and 2022, each from early April to mid-May. The approach of taking snapshots was chosen to better understand the changes in collaboration patterns across 2+ years of data.

We identified meaningful trends in how employees adjusted their collaboration habits over time and adapted to the challenges of remote work. We highlight four of those trends in this paper, including the significant increase in one-on-one meetings, the rise of ad-hoc collaboration, and changes in meeting attendance culture

The results have implications for employee wellness, productivity, retention, and effective organizational communication. Understanding these trends can empower organizational leaders to meet the needs of their workforce and improve the employee experience.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly all meetings went virtual, almost overnight. This led to a similar proportional increase in concrete data.

This article extends that effort to measure engagement trends over time and studies how the workforce is adapting to remote-first and hybrid collaboration. Vyopta compared samples of meeting data from six-week periods from 2020, 2021, and 2022, and has found the following clear trends:

●    An increase in meeting volume is propelled by a significant increase in ad hoc one-on-one (1:1) meetings, indicating a shift in how employees are using the technology and engaging with each other.
●    Returning to the office (mostly in hybrid schedules) does not significantly impact the number of meetings held virtually.
●    Meeting culture and familiarity with the technology both improved (17% fewer participants arriving late and 57% reduction in rejoins)

Increased Meetings, More Meetings, Less Focus

●    The number of meetings per week for the average knowledge worker increased between each sample period while the average meeting duration decreased (See Figure A). This is a continuation of previously published trends.
●    However, the average number of participants decreased, reversing the prior trend noted early in the pandemic. –The number of participants in meetings increased (Microsoft)

An increased number of short meetings may support team dynamics in a remote/hybrid environment.

However, this also typically results in a more fragmented daily schedule for knowledge workers. This is an unintentional side effect and can easily go unnoticed, but the availability of sufficient focus time and the cost of interruptions should be monitored, especially since both factors are frequently cited as stressors that reduce wellness and productivity.

The drop in the average number of participants is mostly driven by the increase in 1:1 meetings which will be discussed later. However, both small-group and large-group meetings also saw reductions in participant size, just of a smaller magnitude.

Leaders can monitor how meeting schedules impact focus time and adjust recurring meetings as needed. Implementing “meeting-free” days has been successful for many organizations (Harvard Business Review). Encouraging employees to reserve focus time on their calendars is also important, but most of the burden falls on managers & team leads to be cognizant of focus time when scheduling recurring meetings

Author Bio

Mike Tolliver is Product Management Director at Vyopta. Connect Mike Tolliver