The Cost Of Virtual Meetings During Covid-19

The impact of Covid-19 on businesses across the UK, as well as the world, has been extremely significant. From high street shops having to close down entirely, to office-based firms having to shift much of their operations to working remotely – very few businesses have avoided some level of disruption.

For businesses who continue to operate with teams of employees working remotely, an additional cost to this has been the increased time people are having to spend in virtual meetings, in order to keep in touch with the team and wider business.

Even before Covid-19, meetings have long been associated with time wasted at work, with many people reporting that most of the meetings they attend were largely a waste of time, and the information could have probably been better communicated in an email.

It’s estimated that the typical office worker spends around 1 hour per day in meetings, which equates to half a working day per week. With the introduction of remote working for the foreseeable future, this is more than likely to increase, so that employees can stay connected.

In order to understand the true cost of time spent in virtual meetings, the team at CIPHR.com have created a virtual meetings calculator, to see just how much it really costs when factoring time spent in meetings and an employees salary.

For someone who spends 5 hours per week in meetings at work, and earns an annual salary of £45,000, the meetings calculator shows that this equates to a monthly cost to the business of £474.

To give a picture of the time spent in meetings over a month, this is the same amount of time it would take to create your own toilet paper from scratch.

For a higher paid executive on £120,000, who may typically spend around half of their working day in meetings, this would result in a total monthly meetings cost of over £5,000.

To give an idea of the time over a month, the calculator shows that this is the same amount of time it would take to wash your hands while humming happy birthday twice, 14,400 times.

Commenting on the release of the virtual meeting calculator, David Richter, director of marketing at CIPHR, said:

“This new calculator puts a light-hearted spin on the sudden increase of virtual meetings and chat that many organisations are adjusting to.”

Next time you’re about to send a virtual meeting request, think: could this be an email instead?

Is every person on the invitation list genuinely required (or is there anyone important missing)?

Will it really take an hour, or will 15 or 30 minutes suffice?

And when you’re in a virtual meeting, respect your co-workers’ time and stay on topic. Equally, while chat apps are a great way for colleagues to keep in touch in an informal way, too many notifications can end up being distracting. If you want an answer to a question that’s not urgent, email may be best. And if you need a block of time to focus on an activity, change your notification settings to ‘do not disturb’.“

He added: “Remember, virtual meetings and chat apps are just some of the ways to communicate information; for critical announcements, organisations might find it more effective to use functionality available in specialist HR systems like CIPHR.”

© New To HR