What are people who WFH on teams calls meeting about?

[mjf981]

I've always had an obvious client facing (healthcare) role. I have appointments every 20-30 minutes and obviously need to be in the office to do this. All of my friends have similar jobs, or manual labour type jobs in factories, farms etc. We have maybe 1 meeting every few months, and its just 10 minutes of management giving us an update on how things are going.

I see people on here all the time saying they spent all day in teams meetings while WFH, and I have no idea what these meetings are. What are these meetings? Who are you meeting with? Is it other team members or mostly clients? How are you generating income for your employer? Enlighten me please. Its a world I know nothing about.

Not all jobs generate money or have an end client, I work in IT project based.

The projects I am on now are to;

Stabilise an old IT system to stop it breaking all the time (cost saving)
Building a new system to depreciate too older systems and remove a reliance on an external vendor (cost saving)

meetings are the same as before WFH times, just more of them as WFH has proved to create more efficiency in at least my sector, for example in the before times I probably wouldn’t be working on these two exact big projects at a time.

meeting include;

Updating stakeholders on progress
Planning
requirement gathering
Technical design work shops
Requirement elaboration

I think there's doers and then people who make sure stuff get done. In my previous role I'd have been 25% doer and 75% making sure stuff got done which was reviewing reports, training, progress updates, setting goals etc all of which would have been meetings- I'd also have been on loads of teams for different projects as a representative for our core team. So I'd have spent more time talking about things than actually doing anything. Dh is on calls 24/7 since wfh so I'm surmising he "does" very little.

I have 4 meetings today. 1:1 with t/l, training a colleague (which will mostly be chat), team meeting to review certain stuff and later a wider meeting that has always been remote as it’s between different offices. We talk about priorities, bring up any queries and agree actions.

Lawyer here.

Today I've had a virtual case management hearing followed by a Teams call with my client to discuss next steps.

Other recent Teams meetings have been to discuss strategy with a case team, to have some training on a new piece of software, to interview promotion candidates and then discuss with other interviewers who should go through, plus lots of bullshit admin meetings.

Today is ratings for staff, investment committee, and some of my trans 1:1s.

Also the bank’s senior leadership term catch-up, where decisions are made about strategy.

My meetings so far today
30 minutes with a colleague to help with social media content
1 hour to roll out some info to the sales team
30 minutes with a client who needed help with an issue
45 minutes with a new client to onboard them

That should be “team’s 1:1s”, not trans.

A lot of my team's meetings wouldn't have been face to face before, they would have been conference calls. So not much change except the IT is better, and I have make an effort to look ok!

I can’t believe how happy this thread has made me! I’m so glad that I quit the corporate rat race to become self employed. Listening to people yak on about tedious job related shit is soul destroying.

Solicitor.

3x meetings with other people from my office plus representatives of the other side to agree contract terms.

I’m so glad that I quit the corporate rat race to become self employed.

Here come the MLM bots!

Snort.

I'm a teacher. As per our contact, we need to have 195 hours of meetings in the academia year. We need to find things to fulfil the hours.

I'm in Scotland at a local authority school.

A new process for work are arranging and my 121 with my manager

Talking to my clients about work they want me to do or have done, talking to my team about work they are doing on my clients, talking to someone senior to explain what I've done and get them to sign it off, talking to other members of my firm who also work on my clients about things that relate to their work on same client.

Why is that hard to understand🤷‍♀️

I work as a bid manager in a corporate law firm.
My role is concerned with winning new contracts from clients.
A 'bid' essentially involves taking part in a competition whereby you submit a very comprehensive document to the client which answers a raft of questions that they have posed, and which sets out why they should award the work to you. You also submit a range of policies, certificates and CVs. If you're successful at that stage, you will often get invited to a 'pitch'. This is a formal presentation with a Q&A session afterwards.
To go through this entire process can take from weeks to months and there are calls throughout to understand the client's requirements, plan the response, plan the team who will be delivering the work, agree fees, chase the lawyers to get them to contribute specialist content, refine responses, plan the pitch, create pitch materials and rehearse the team.
This leads to MANY calls!
On top of this, I'm involved in some side projects to improve various processes across the firm, so I'm involved in calls to make sure those projects progress at the right pace.

I only have a 15 min team huddle every morning and if anything else pop up. Rest of the time is getting workndone

I work in shipping so I speak to my other team members and forwaders

In my old role - meetings with potential clients about what consultancy services we offer which will suit their business model, which ones they might like, how much it will cost and how we will deliver the service.

In my new role - meetings with our consultants about why they haven't delivered a service we're paying for (see above); meetings with our accountant about financial reports we have to submit to regulators; meetings with designers about our website; meetings with the managers of our sister firm to check on project progress; meetings with potential acquisitions etc.

Essentially, everything that we used to travel around the country or into a city to gather in a room to do over pasteies/lunch and coffee, can now be done from your own home sitting in front of a screen. Saves a small fortune in travel expenses.

It is nice to get out and about sometimes, granted. But when you suffer from relentless IBS and chronic migraines you are very thankful not to have to travel far!

Didn’t you post that you were sacked though so had no choice, and are now stuck in a terrible situation at work and home?

It’s a bit strange to gloat in those circumstances.

It’s just like speaking to people but on a screen.
My job isn’t tedious at all.

Busted!!

I work in HR so although we don't generate income in the traditional sense our role is to get the right people into the right jobs so our company can make their products and also to ensure the company complies with the law and we don't get sued. (That's a very basic version anyway.)

A lot of my day can be in meetings, that could be face to face if in the office or it's via Zoom when I'm/other people are working from home. An example of my day yesterday was:

A morning team meeting to go through what each of us is working on and if there's anything we need to know. For example if an employee's resigned, or been hired, or is going on maternity leave, or is going to face a disciplinary then we let each other know so everyone in the HR team is informed about what's happening with our people even if we're not directly dealing with it.

I then interviewed a candidate for a job we're recruiting, and then had a follow up meeting with the hiring manager to discuss feedback, what salary we'd offer, when we need them to start by, getting contract signed etc.

Then I was in a meeting with an employee and their line manager as they aren't meeting their objectives and the manager is worried about their performance so we needed to agree a plan of action.

Then one of our staff members is struggling with their mental health and with a drinking problem. We'd organised an occupational health referral for them and I was in a meeting with them to discuss what the report said and the next steps in how we can best support them and make reasonable adjustments.

Finally I had a really boring meeting discussing the technicalities of employing someone in Canada and what we'd need to do legally and in terms of pay.

To be honest a lot of my day to day work is behind the scenes and I'm sure people wonder what we do all day. I always say my best work is never seen by staff as a whole.....if things are running smoothly then I'm doing my job!

This made me laugh, op.

I used to work or a charity in a team of six. I worked out and about in the community with little contact with colleagues. We had a meeting one maybe twice a month.

I then worked for a very large inter/national company. We had a meeting at least once a day, often more. It used to make me smile that they had more meetings than work and I couldn't see what they achieved. But I never said anything because they were all so lovely and I wasnt staying long. Six months later I was still there and when they called a meeting, I was one of the first up for a meeting. Very important. Haha. It just becomes part of your mindset.

I still think that many were a complete waste of time and were just part of the office culture. But I guess it was a chance to make a brew and have a break in the routine because, really, they achieved very little workwise. Maybe they thought it was good for morale?

From what I hear the dh on it's a lot of "cheers, Steve, I'll email that over to you straight away" nonsense and "teams meetings" that involve a lot of introducing ourselves and their backgrounds in social housing and saying not a great deal at all.

So far thiscwerk -1-1s with own manager and staff
Development meetings re new services
National leads meeting
Budget meeting
Performance/data development meeting

Had a catch up meeting canceĺled