93% of Americans have complaints about meetings. Here are their top 8 do’s and don’t’s

“Hurray, more meetings!” said no one ever.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant we’ve given work a rethink. But unfortunately, meetings are still a mainstay—if not even more prevalent, much to everyone’s disappointment. Mmhmm, a video presentation app, asked 1,000 Americans about their thoughts on meetings, and the response was overwhelming: Nearly 93% had complaints.

Here are the survey’s key findings.

The do’s: 64% say a meeting is valuable when it answers questions, and 61% when it ends with next steps.
The don’t’s: 79% say talking over others is unacceptable, 65% say having a messy background is unacceptable, 63% say meetings should never have more than 7 people, 53% say taking a call from outdoors is unacceptable, 52% say it’s unacceptable to be more than 3 minutes late, and 41% say eating or snacking is unacceptable.
Most employees think their meetings are too long: 47% say over half of their meetings could be cancelled, 42% say the highlight of a meeting is when it’s cancelled. Another 39% admit they’ve booked new meetings to try to get out of existing meetings.
Many people aren’t participating: 40% say they prefer to lurk, i.e., to gather info and remain silent; 27% are multi-tasking while others talk; 14% are having side chats about what’s going on; and 7% are zoning out.

One piece of advice? “The best way to transform a meeting is to move away from the monologues and increase dialogue,” the survey’s authors wrote. “Think about transforming single-speaker, large group ‘meetings’ into smaller, less intimidating ‘conversations.’”