Too many meetings leaving no time to actually get work done?

[teddyeddie]

Does anyone else have a ridiculous number of meetings in their job which stops them actually doing any work and meeting deadlines?

For example, the last few days I have had back to back meetings 9-5 and a 15 minute lunch!! I work 10 hour days over 4 days. I’m not even getting a decent break.

It’s just meeting after meeting - most organised by our line manager who is obsessed with meetings (that could be just an email ).

NHS.

Ah yes, I have this problem, was nowhere near as bad in my old job, which was for a private company, whereas this job is in the civil service (although I work for a consultancy). I work in tech and they are supposedly using the scrum/agile way of working, but they've completely missed the point of it. The whole point was to cut down meetings, so people went to a stand-up for 15 mins max in a morning + a sprint planning/review once a fortnight. And then they'd have loads of time to get into the zone when coding, without having meetings dropped into their calendar breaking the day up.

But OMG, stand-ups every morning are an hour! And then they tag on another meeting straight after which, as far as I can tell just seems to be saying what they've just said in the stand-ups. So that's my morning gone. And there are way too many people in the team whose job it is to have meetings basically. I'm lost as to why we need 5 people to facilitate everyone else doing work, except they don't facilitate anyone doing anything because there's too many of them. The amount of taxpayers money being wasted is unbelievable.

Totally agree OP.

I had meetings all day today. I got round to actually working at ten to five! Ridiculous. Then I was so brain frazzled from all the stupid meetings -where people just talk and talk - that my actual work was probably a bit shit. NHS also.

Just work the hours you are paid for and keep tag on the meetings in terms of lost hours. Always take a proper lunch break. In the meantime let the actual work pile up until the project is in danger of failure. It then becomes a management responsibility and you have covered yourself.

With regards to minutes, record the meeting and then run the transcript through AI to generate the minutes, and ask AI to identify actions.
You’ll need to sense check, but it’s what AI is really useful for.

And block out protected time, lock it as private if that helps.

Agree to blocking out time and labelling with the task you’re doing - if your manager says you need to attend a meeting in that slot, ask them when they want you to complete that task or tell them it will mean the task is delayed by X time. Document those conversations for when someone inevitably asks why something hasn’t got done.

Pitch no meetings Fridays - I know some places do this as standard.

does your organisation use copilot? If so, then turn on transcription for meetings and ask it to provide a summary or minutes (you can feed it an example of minutes you’ve previously written and ask it to match style/format/tone).

Agree hybrid working is a bugger for this because there’s no travel time between meetings which used to make it easier to decline some.

I do wonder, sometimes, if management realise they give people tasks/actions but then spend so much time talking about that the action just rolls over to the next meeting!

We also have daily morning catch up (with senior team) meetings and these drive me mad as 95% isn’t relevant to me.

I'd ask him outright when he expects me to get the work done. And refuse to attend the next lot of meetings until you've caught up.

Yes, time wasting is ridiculous. I end up doing g work from home, unpaid, to do the work I was actually meant to be doing, but couldn’t because I was in yet another meeting to talk about it!

I work 4 days a week so have a Friday off (full time) but I WFH half my time, as do others. Senior management tend to WFH all the time, unless they need to come in for something. So, yes, a lot of meetings are because of this (it isn’t WFH that forces this but the fact we are a multi-site organisation). But, 50% of these meetings could be an email of some sort of sheet listing some things.

Yep.

I think this is the crux of it, he's using you as his PA. Decline, tell him to do some copilot and Teams training so he can do it himself. He's using your time/ skills to make himself look better, probably with an element of sexism... does he line manage any men? Does he ask them to take his notes for him?

Show your manager your diary and ask her how you should prioritise

I can actually be on-site (sat in an office with the same people who are in the Teams meeting with me) but we are still holding the meeting on Teams as 2 people can’t attend in person. I have driven 2 hrs to get there! That really infuriates me.

Yes, I am being used as his PA. I know, it’s not on. I’m also used to do the role of others a lot too. Hence why I work unpaid to catch up. I have only been in this job for 2 years but have a long history in the NHS so feel a bit miffed about it (will be job hunting soon).

He line manages other men but they don’t have to take minutes etc. Most meetings are male dominated. I’m surprised I’m not asked to make the tea and fetch the biscuits!!!

Don't you just block out time that you're not available for meetings?

It’s a he.

The trust is in severe financial difficulties which leads to staff to doing more than they should be.

I do, sometimes, but they make me unblock it.

That’s ok you can ask him then 😂

This isn’t really true though because they’re also paying people who hold pointless meetings (in your view at least)

It is called justifying jobs. The public sector as you know has far too many chiefs. If they don't hold meetings how on earth would they fill their days? If time and motion studies were to take place at least 50% of such managers would lose their jobs.

No wonder the trust is in dire straits if they waste everyone's time with bullshit meetings. Have you ever said to your LM that many of these time-wasting meetings could be avoided if people just wrote an email? Do you have regular reviews with your line manager? I would be requesting a meeting with mine immediately if I was repeatedly pressurised to unblock time that I'd blocked off for essential parts of my job. The 'Busy' function is there for precisely this reason!

Put recurring slots in your diary for lunch and set it to auto decline meetings scheduled for then. Also set time-blocks for work or any other times you need to protect.

Actually speak to your manager not just hope he will "take the hint".

Don't attend (or delegate) some of the most frivolous ones and get the notes or actions from Slack/ Teams/delegated colleague.

You need to set your boundaries here. People aren't setting meetings to maliciously steal your time, they're just seeing open slots and booking them, and it sounds like a lot of those meetings can be shorter or in written form anyway.

I’m nhs and I absolutely agree with this;
morning “huddles” which are absolutely pointless and maybe another one later in The day….. a lot of it is down to higher management wanting to “micromanage” people
then lots of meetings which could have just been an email!!!!