Meetings have become established as an essential part of modern work. On average, employees dedicate up to eight hours a week to them with the aim of improving collaboration and streamlining decision-making. However, in many cases they do not fulfill their purpose: more than half of the time spent in meetings is perceived as unnecessary and there are many professionals who end the sessions without being clear about the next steps they should take.
This is one of the main conclusions of the report The Cost of Bad Meetings, prepared by Jabra, a company specialized in professional audio and video solutions. The study analyzes how ineffective meetings affect the work environment and what impact they have on productivity, company economics and employee experience.
How technological failures influence meetings
The effects of an ineffective meeting are not always immediate. Often the consequences appear later. According to the report, 66% of professionals say they leave meetings without defined concrete actions, which causes the need to organize new meetings (59%) and increases the workload (59%).
Among the main causes are technological problems. Currently, 52% of virtual meetings have technical failures, a figure that increases to 75% in hybrid meetings, those in which both people participate in person and remotely.
The most common incidents include difficulties hearing or seeing all participants correctly. As a consequence, hybrid meetings last an average of 11 minutes and the flow of conversation is difficult.
“Having a good organization of the meeting is almost as important as having the appropriate technological infrastructure. Poor connectivity or audio and video incidents directly impact the results of the session, doubling the need to return to issues discussed later,” explains Camile Petit, Sales Manager for Iberia at Jabra.
Faced with these difficulties, some participants choose to turn off the camera, a decision that ends up making communication even more difficult and increases the need to hold new meetings by 43%.
All of this fuels what Jabra calls “meeting debt”: a cycle in which one ineffective meeting generates another, creating a cumulative effect that ends up negatively affecting the company’s productivity.
Economic impact and professional fatigue
The consequences of bad meetings are not limited to inefficient time management. They also impact business costs and employee well-being.
According to the study, in an organization with 5,000 workers, the combination of unproductive meetings and technological problems can generate losses of more than 130 million euros annually. Of that amount, more than 112 million correspond to time spent in unnecessary or low-value meetings, while another 7.3 million are linked to technical incidents in hybrid meetings.
In terms of employee experience, 87% of professionals admit to feeling some rejection towards meetings. Furthermore, 42% claim to reach their energy limit after two hours of continuous meetings, a percentage that rises to 83% when meetings exceed four consecutive hours. This fatigue can translate into less attention, more need to review topics later, and reduced participation.
The hybrid format also influences the perception of inclusion. Half of professionals who connect remotely to hybrid meetings say they have felt excluded at some point. This feeling is even more common among women, with 16% more likely to feel displaced, and among junior employees, where the percentage increases by 26%.
The combination of unproductive meetings and technological problems can generate losses of more than 130 million euros annually
“Virtual and hybrid meetings are a tool widely used by companies to streamline tasks and encourage collaboration. However, for them to really work it is essential to have the right conditions. In hybrid environments, technology plays a key role to achieve more inclusive, balanced and useful participation,” adds Petit.
AI can help, but it can’t fix poor meetings
Artificial intelligence can also help improve meeting productivity through transcription tools, summary generation or agreement tracking. In this context, the quality of meetings becomes even more important.
According to the report, three out of four professionals have already tried this type of solutions, although less than one out of three uses them regularly.
The results suggest that the main challenge is not in the technology itself, but in how meetings are carried out. When conversations are unclear, decisions are not defined, or there are problems hearing and understanding each other, the value of these tools decreases considerably.
In other words, AI can make meeting documentation and tracking easier, but it does not replace the need for well-organized meetings with adequate technological expertise.
“AI can enhance a well-organized meeting, but it cannot solve one that is already failing from the start. If organizations want to harness its full potential, they must first ensure that participants can see, hear and understand each other clearly. The effectiveness of these tools depends, to a large extent, on the quality of the conversations they work on,” concludes Petit.
