As hybrid and remote work rates have risen over the last few years, questions around optimizing productivity have continued to plague HR, particularly when it comes to the role of remote meetings. It’s a topic HR needs to keep front and center, according to a new survey, which found that an ineffective virtual meeting culture could ultimately drag down productivity and even increase turnover.

ClickUp, a project management AI-based software provider, recently released findings from its survey of more than 1,000 desk workers about virtual meeting culture. Key findings include that 46% of employees have quit because of a company’s broken collaboration culture, particularly too many useless meetings. More than half say the decision to quit was connected to an organization’s virtual meeting software.

Mandy Mekhail, director of people at ClickUp, says the survey results are unsurprising.

“Virtual meetings are broken,” Mekhail says. “We’ve created this massive overhead where people spend more time talking about work than actually doing work.”

Is it time to ‘kill all meetings’?

Mekhail says ineffective virtual meeting culture is connected to communication failures, which lead to teams’ inability to achieve results and persistent “rework,” or employees having to revisit or redo tasks. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents say most meetings require follow-up because of unclear directions.

The frequency of virtual meetings may also be an impediment to productivity, the survey found, and may be driving inattention. For instance, 40% of respondents say they spend four to six, and sometimes more, hours per week in virtual meetings—and they multitask in half of them. Nearly half say they have used the restroom during a remote meeting, and 13% have actually showered during one.

“That just shows how inefficient meetings are,” Mekhail says.

Even without virtual meetings, online collaboration is lacking. When Slack and other collaboration tools first came out, everyone thought they’d solve workplace communication problems. But, Mekhail says, they just replaced bad meetings with endless chat threads.

“You’re still doing rework: discussing something in Slack, then doing something else entirely in another system,”  Mekhail says. “So, fewer meetings and thousands of written messages became the avenue to initiate follow-up on conversations that can ensure clarity, rehash roles and responsibilities, take down progress reports, etc.”

AI can play a pivotal role in helping organizations reimagine their virtual work culture, particularly in reducing rework, confusion and a lack of follow-through from too many online meetings and chats.

“It all happens in one place,” she says about AI-powered workforce collaboration. AI can make inferences, write next steps and assign tasks based on data from current communication avenues. She points to the survey finding that 45% of executives spend 30-plus minutes writing post-meeting action items—an extremely costly, wasted use of leadership time.

“Imagine the savings if, say, AI can get 90% of that done,” she says.

Mekhail emphasizes that she doesn’t think employers should “kill all meetings.” Human interaction does matter, she notes, and can drive true innovation in its spontaneity.

“But right now,” she says, “most meetings are just performative. People show up, they talk, but nothing actually happens.”

3 strategies to improve virtual meeting culture

Mekhail says HR has a massive role to play in redefining virtual meeting culture as “architects” of how a workforce effectively communicates and operates.

Such strategies should include:

• Incorporating focus time and time-blocking: This often looks like meeting-free days or afternoons, but it can just as easily be an agreement for team members to time-block deep focus on the same activity and hop on a call as needed within that established time.
• Building a strong “async muscle”: If it isn’t written down, it’s not likely to happen. Use tools to record outcomes from meetings. Encourage friendly nudges or more serious escalations depending on what happens (or doesn’t) if outcomes are missed.
• Focusing on meeting structure and purpose: Why does the meeting exist? Is there a pre-set agenda to make the most of time? Will attendees have access to contribute in advance and see the final product?

“As HR practitioners, it’s clearly time to put the policies and the tools in place that create a positive meeting culture experience,” Mekhail says.

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