And as we lay the year to rest, a bit more insight into employees.
A recent study by workspace collaboration analytics company Vyopta found a connection between employee retention and meeting attendance. Based on anonymized metadata from 48 million virtual meetings in 10 different organizations, the research found that employees who eventually left their company were in 46% fewer one-on-one meetings and 22% less likely to have hosted meetings than non-departing employees. While the data does not prove a causal relationship between meeting attendance and retention, the correlation may indicate changes in meeting culture within enterprises. In addition, a study by the Harvard Business Review found that virtual meetings have become more frequent, spontaneous, shorter, and include fewer participants. The number of meeting participants decreased from 20 in 2020 to 10 in 2021, and 66% of one-on-one meetings were unscheduled. There were also 60% more virtual meetings in 2021 than in 2020, and 42% of meetings were one-on-ones, compared to 17% in 2020. Both studies independently found that meeting participants shrunk by half, down to 10 from 20.
Why do we care?
There’s a management insight here. Smaller meetings. Less of them. More one-on-ones. Meeting-free days. These are intentional choices that managers will need to make to be more effective and, seemingly, keep employees. There’s a push and pull here – one doesn’t want to have too infrequent contact for fear of isolation.
It’s intentional to be an effective manager. And now the rules have changed.