Some people spend up to six hours a day in meetings, survey says

A global survey recently commissioned by Plantronics on how people in the offices experience meetings revealed that almost 6 in 10 office workers sometimes have between 5 to 10 hours of meetings per week.

2017-12-14 12:25:36

According to the survey, 56 per cent of the respondents indicated 5-10 hours of meetings a week, yet 37 per cent said they typically have 11-30 hours of meetings a week – which for some means a staggering average of up to 6 hours of meetings a day.

These statistics support the saying "I live going from a meeting to another" which affects many office workers' daily lives. And when meetings occur, there are all sort of potential obstacles in the path of the ongoing conversation. Survey respondents indicated an average duration of 3-8 minutes, per meeting, can be lost due to technical malfunctions or mismatches: getting a Wi-Fi pass, starting the projector, opening files and the list goes on.

Besides, since we live in a living world where ambient sounds are abundant, there are often background noises overlaying most conversations and the survey of Plantronics shows that 56 per cent of the respondents suggest they can hear side conversations in the background - and for 12 per cent this conversation sounded like a disagreement. 29 per cent recalled the sound of an ambulance siren as talk stopper, 26 per cent were uncomfortable due to hearing music in the background, 24 per cent heard a dog barking in the distance. Office buildings are not hermetically built, so all the surrounding noise is affecting us all.