Minimizing and optimizing time spent by staff in meetings saves money.

They say that time is money, so it wouldn’t be wise to waste the time of your employees, right? Yet this is exactly what’s happening everyday when companies drag their staff into inefficient meetings.

How much money is being wasted? If you take the hourly rate of the people attending and multiply it by the length of the meeting, you’ll start to get a good idea. For executives, it would be in the thousands of dollars; for lower level employees, each person would cost around $50 in lost revenue. Overall, on a yearly basis, meetings cost an average company around $25,000.

So what can be done to reduce this money drain?

One of the simplest solutions is to make sure the meeting starts on time, which means getting people to arrive before the scheduled start time.

Imagine if an Olympic runner decided to show up to the race just as the gun went off. They’d never catch up to those who were in position and ready to go.

The same holds true for those who show up right when a meeting begins. These people are actually late, since they keep things from moving forward and make the meeting less effective.

So make sure everyone knows that being on time actually means getting there five minutes early. You can tell employees that being timely is a sign of respect, and being tardy clearly signals disrespect, both of the company and of their coworkers.

Another solution is to allow for opt-outs. People often get called to a meeting even though they have no real business being there. So why not share the agenda a few days in advance and allow people to opt out of attending if there’s no business relevant to them being discussed.

You could also provide a timetable for attendance along with the agenda, which would allow people to schedule their arrival and departure in accordance with relevant portions of the meeting. This way, no one needs to waste an hour of their day to discuss five-minutes worth of business.