Shopify, an e-commerce company that makes it easy for anyone to open an online store, recently embarked on an interesting move designed to reduce the number of meetings held by its employees. Forefront explains why and how it does it.
Shopify has stated that it believes its employees' time should be spent helping merchants using the platform succeed, not futile meetings. Therefore, she implemented an appointment cost calculator in the employee calendar apps. The calculator estimates the cost of meetings with three or more participants by calculating based on average compensation data across roles and departments, the number of attendees, and the duration of the meeting.
According to Shopify, a 30-minute meeting, attended by three employees, can cost anywhere from $700 to $1,600. However, a meeting attended by a senior official can cost $2,000 or more.
As part of efforts to streamline meeting schedules, Shopify introduced a meeting policy called "Chaos Monkey" earlier this year, instructing employees to cancel any scheduled meetings with more than three participants. The meeting cost calculator serves as a deterrent to unnecessary meetings. It is not enforced, but encourages teams to think twice before holding meetings about whether they are really necessary, and to work more time on their real tasks.
As a result of the move, according to Chief Financial Officer Jeff Hofmeister, 12,000 meetings were removed from Spotify's schedule at the beginning of the year, and the company estimated that it would cancel 474,000 meetings by the end of the year, for a total of 322,000 hours of work. The average meeting time per employee decreased by 14%, and the company instituted "no-meeting Wednesdays," which reduced meeting time on those days by 26%.
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