How many of you can admit to checking your email, doing other work or texting during a conference call?
Well, you’re definitely not alone!
A new study by Intercall, the largest international conference call company, confirms what we’re all guilty of. Most people don’t really pay attention during conference calls. More than half surveyed said they’re guilty of attending to other work, sending an email or eating or making food.
Check out this bar graph created by Harvard Business Review:
As more and more companies are gravitating toward office-less work environment, conference calls are the traditional method of keeping a large team informed and communicative. But Intercall’s study seems to highlight the fact that we’re all pretty much zoning out during these calls.
This opens up the larger question: How productive are conference calls, anyhow?
"Part of the problem comes from too many meetings," Rob Bellmar, Intercall’s executive vice president of conferencing and collaboration told Harvard Business Review. "This leads people to confuse activity with productivity."
Often times, large conference calls mainly benefit bosses in being aware of what’s going on with their team. This can be done in a way that doesn’t eat up everyone else’s time.
Team heads and leaders can get reports sent directly to them rather than conduct a full, mandatory meeting. Your heart might be in the right place. After all, it’s nice to involve everyone. But if no one’s paying attention, that time might be better spent focusing on actual work.
In fact, even some managers agree that conference meetings are sometimes a waste of time.
“In three separate surveys, managers said that between 25 and 50 percent of their time in meetings was a waste of time,” according to The Atlantic. “A large review of studies on meeting productivity similarly found that meetings, although critical to workflow across many industries, repeatedly tested as being net drains to productivity.”
With everyone’s eyes on each other, it’s a little harder to zone out or walk away to heat up your lunch!
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