Remote meetings getting shorter, more frequent

There are more remote meetings than before, but they don't last as long.

This was the conclusion of a recent study outlined in the Harvard Business Review. The researchers examined the metadata from all Zoom, Microsoft Teams and WebEx meetings from 10 large global organizations to see how remote meetings were changing. Overall, they found evidence that we have gone from a few long meetings at the start of the pandemic to many short meetings now.

Since 2020, the length of remote meetings has shortened by 25%, from an average time of 43 minutes in 2020 to 33 minutes in 2022. Further, the total number of people in these meetings has gone down from an average of 20 participants at the start of the pandemic to 10 now, a change driven mainly by the increase in one-on-one meetings versus larger group sessions. At the same time, the total number of meetings increased 59%, a change of an average of five per week per employee to eight. Meetings also grew more spontaneous — while only 17% of meetings were unscheduled in 2020, now 66% of all one-on-one meetings are impromptu in 2022.

"The combination of these findings presents an interesting picture: not that remote workers seem to be becoming less engaged, but rather — at least with respect to meetings — they are becoming more engaged with their colleagues," said Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, who co-authored the study.
"This data also suggests that remote interactions are shifting to more-closely mirror in-person interactions. Whereas there have been substantial concerns that employees are missing out on the casual and spontaneous rich interactions that happen in-person, these findings indicate that remote employees may be beginning to compensate for the loss of those interactions by increasingly having impromptu meetings remotely."

The researchers recommended that companies encourage synchronous work schedules for remote workers in order to encourage spontaneous interactions. They also said companies should make it easier for people to have meetings by doing things like not requiring cameras, which can contribute to "Zoom fatigue." Finally, if someone truly is disengaged and attends few meetings, have a talk about why and what can be done to make things easier, as opposed to simply forcing them to attend more meetings.