Constant work meetings - AIBU?

[ChasingLights]

I'd be interested to see if anyone else would find this annoying...

I started a new job just over a month ago. I really enjoy it. It's similar to my old job and I feel that I've picked things up quite quickly because of my previous experience.

It's fully remote which is the same across the entire company. It's fast paced, very busy, lots of emails and phone calls. I finish one task and then I'm onto another which I love as the days go so quickly and I'm never bored, but the constant unnecessary team meetings are starting to do my head in.

For example, every morning we have a catch up call which lasts around 30 minutes where my manager just repeats things that he's already told us. We then have another catch up meeting every Tuesday and Thursday where we discuss what we're working on (which is always the same) and what our pro's and con's of the week are. We also have a call every Friday afternoon to discuss how our week has gone. It's just so tedious and time consuming.
The meeting on a Tuesday/Thursday isn't mandatory but the couple of times where I haven't logged on because I've had stuff to do, my manager has emailed to ask why and so I've felt obligated to join in.

I do really like my team and the company itself, and it is nice to catch up every so often but these constant meetings are taking up so much time and I feel like I'm always behind on my work because of them.

AIBU?

FYI - I am on annual leave today hence why I am on mumsnet and not working 😅

The morning calls sound like the type of thing all the "experts" were suggesting to make remote workers still feel like part of a team when the pandemic sent everyone working from home. Similar with the Friday ones. The other two just sound annoying!

We have a senior team meeting and a regular team meeting on a Monday to discuss workloads and resourcing and so we can move work around if we need to. That feels like plenty.

DH's team went in for the call every morning thing but more like 15-20 mins. They've dropped down to Mon, Weds, Fri now, which feels like plenty.

You could try a gentle conversation with your manager about the utility of all these calls and whether a bit of streamlining would be better for everyone.

Call them out on what your perceive as bad practice, a poor use of the time of many people, suggest a better way to work - if you work for the company and have the best interests of the company and its employees at heart then speak up - maybe you’ll learn something or appreciate or understand something that you’re missing atm or maybe you have a good point - the worst thing a company can have is a culture where people are afraid to bring things up - that smacks of an culture where naïve, unworldly and inexperienced bottom rung managers take on the style of management from the people above them often the ones that had a hand in approving them to their first management positions - they often don’t have the work experience or experience of other management cultures to know how to act and think for themselves and are easily sucked in to mimicking the ways of thinking and working that their immediate line managers display. Just have a conversation about what you don’t think is a good way to work. Too many people worry about making the wrong impression on people you work for - Is encourage you not to be so inhibited. Think for yourself.

You don’t have to go in all guns blazing - just ask - why do we work this way? Do we have to? It’s this the best way? Can’t it be improved? Couldn’t we instead…? You work for the company just the same as other people at other levels - you’re entitled to ask and to wonder.

We have a daily call but it's necessary and useful. We have a weekly team meeting and a weekly management meeting.

Maybe when you've been there a bit longer you can drop some of the non mandatory ones.

Do you have to put your camera on? I try to work on during some meetings!!

My DP works from home and is constantly on calls and meetings. The amusing thing is that he is a computer programmer! No idea how anyone writes anything if they're talking all the time.
I have to work in an office and never have meetings!
So, YANBU but how you'll resolve it I don't know.

You've only been there just over a month. I don't think "calling them out for poor practice" as suggested up thread sounds at all appropriate.

That’s not a lot of meetings, though.

It really isn't. I'd love to have so few.
But with the morning catchup being half an hour, which is probably too long, the tuesday/thursday extra meetings seem pretty pointless. I can see why your manager might prebook them in case something comes up in the morning meeting that needs a bit of digging into, but to have them with no purpose but reiteration is a waste of time. The Friday end-of-week wrapup is useful.

I suspect these meetings are a price of being fully remote.

I hear you, I've started to call it ''Death by meeting'. We have at least half an hour every single day, 5% work and 95% drivel. Does my head in. Meanwhile we are snowed under with work which isn't getting done. Go figure....

The trouble with the daily standup format is that it encourages a certain type to bang on in huge detail and make it sound as though they’re terribly busy and important, and everyone else disengages. They need to be chaired quite actively to stop this from happening.

I agree, this approach could seem inappropriate from a new member of staff, plus come across as overly aggressive.

But I think OP could use their newness to challenge things in a more subtle way. For example mention to your line manager that now you’ve had experience of the different meetings you’d appreciate clarification on what the additional tues and thurs meetings are for? How are they different to the daily check ins? What is he/she expecting you to gain from attending them?

There may well be good reasons for why the various meeting types were set up, and as a new member of colleague I think trying to understand the background and context is most useful. Yes, you may then conclude there are too many pointless meetings but it would then be coming from a place of experience and knowledge!

If there would be no annoying meetings there would be annoying collaborative documents/spreadsheets to fill and if there would be no documents then there would be annoying slack/teams threads. That's just how it is with remote work IMO.

Perhaps mail your LM to say you're on a roll with x task and want to keep momentum so won't be joining the Tuesday catch up but will be sure to be there on Thursday.

I have much the same. I only work 3 days, and each day has a mandatory meeting which is supposed to be a '5 minute catch up' but reaches from 30-120m. The amount of it that is relevant for my work is tiny.

Sounds like your LM isn’t very busy.

I would email before to explain why you aren’t logging on as well.

In the old days we used to have a monthly department meeting. Most people would say ‘same as last month, still working on’ and move on. One woman would literally list every single thing she had done for half an hour, strangely she never seemed very busy to me. Management loved her.

I honestly don't think a 30 mins catch up each morning and one more mandatory meeting at the end of the week is many meetings at all, especially for a fully remote team.

That doesn't sounds like a huge number of meetings for a virtual team to stay in touch tbh. I also think it's a hard thing to get right. I used to work for a team that had fewer meetings and everyone complained they were feeling isolated and didn't know what was going on.

I manage a fully remote team. I speak to them throughout the day on slack on a daily basis.

I have a monthly 1-2-1 with everyone and a weekly TM. That's just fine.

30 mins a day + Tues + Thurs + Fri? That's fucking ridiculous, everyone must be just bored of the same shit. I refuse to waste time for the sake of it. I'm hands on and approachable. I don't need a 30 min slot daily because I'm going to be around, saying hello, checking in if you need anything anyway.

Having spent a career in education I feel the poster's pain. Meetings are one thing (in the dictionary definition of the word) as opposed to box-ticking exercises and voice recitals.. Management never copped on to the died that we could, and wanted to be, doing something more useful in the hours we spent being talked at

Can you work while the meetings are running? With your camera off?

It's impossible for us to say, really, as we don't know what sort of sector or role you work in.

I work on an extremely fast-paced environment where things change very fast, and it's essential to be up to date. Yes the workload is heavy and meetings can feel onerous, but when we were fully remote we needed daily full team meetings to ensure people were on top of what was happening.

It also always seemed to be that the people who didn't know what was going on and were complaining at being "out of the loop" were also the ones who didn't listen in the meetings and said they were pointless.

Agree that the meetings have to be ruthlessly chaired and kept on track. Nobody likes meeting for no reason.

Yep similar - started a new job in Jan. I think you can politely point out to your manager, from a newbies’ perspective, that the meeting configurations are not the most productive. Perhaps suggest they could do a survey or something to get consensus on a better system? Better to suggest something positive than moan

I mean the meetings you mention don't sounds a huge amount - although the constant "catch ups" would annoy me.

Generally I am in agreement though, I used to have days of total back to back meetings. I'd have no time to make a cup of tea or do any actual work. Now I try be really selective about what meetings/ calls I attend - I decline ones I don't need to be on (it helps I'm fairly senior so can be more selective) and if the purpose/ agenda isn't clear then I ask in advance. The advice used to be don't send an email if you can sort it in a call, but I now do the opposite, I won't join a call if I know it can be sorted in a short email exchange.