Work Isn’t Working: How Rethinking Your Meeting Culture Could Transform Your Time, Energy and Impact

Let’s talk about something that’s slowly draining the life out of our workdays—something we all know is broken but somehow continue to tolerate. I’m talking about meetings. Yes, the meeting culture epidemic that’s quietly eating away at our productivity, our focus, and let’s face it, our sanity.

For decades, we’ve accepted this bizarre belief that being “in back-to-back meetings” means we’re doing important work. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: 71% of meetings are unproductive. That means nearly three-quarters of the meetings you attend every week aren’t actually helping you do better work, make better decisions, or create better outcomes.

And if that wasn’t confronting enough, let’s talk about how much time we’re losing. The average professional spends 11.3 hours a week in meetings. That’s eight hours of wasted time every single week—the equivalent of an entire working day gone. Multiply that by four weeks in a month, and you’ve just lost 32 hours of your life—the same as an entire week’s work, completely unproductive. Stretch that across the year, and you’ll find you’ve lost ten full working weeks. Ten!

Imagine being gifted an extra two and a half months of working time every single year. What could you achieve with that space? What impact could you make? How much better could your team perform?

But instead of reclaiming that time, most of us stay trapped in the cycle. We tell ourselves this is just how modern work works. Meetings are the way we collaborate, communicate, make decisions, and include people. Right? Well, not exactly.

Why Our Meeting Culture Is Failing Us

The problem isn’t that meetings exist. The problem is how we meet.

We fall into the trap of inviting too many people, with no clear purpose, no clear outcomes, and no real accountability for how time is spent. We schedule meetings by default, not by design. We mistake attendance for engagement, and discussion for progress. And in trying to include everyone, we often exclude the very people whose voices we most need to hear—because the environment hasn’t been intentionally designed to include them.

Studies have shown that most people are multitasking through meetings—checking emails, writing reports, or quietly zoning out—because they’ve already learned that most meetings don’t actually require their attention. They’re in the room (or on the call) because that’s what’s expected, not because it’s valuable.

And here’s the bigger risk: when meetings are performative, people stop speaking up. When meetings are bloated, introverted and neurodivergent colleagues might disengage. When meetings feel pointless, trust in leadership quietly erodes. So yes, the stakes are higher than just wasted time.

But Here’s the Good News: You Can Change This

It might feel overwhelming to try and shift an entire organisational culture overnight—and you’d be right. You can’t control how your whole company meets. But you absolutely can change the way you meet. You can start setting new standards. You can create a ripple effect. You can lead by example.

And that starts with intentionally redesigning your meeting culture—starting with the spaces you control.

What’s the purpose of this meeting?
Do you really need a meeting, or could this be an email or shared document?
Who genuinely needs to be involved?
How can you create psychological safety so that everyone feels they belong in the conversation?
What decisions or actions need to happen next?

These aren’t just nice-to-have questions. They’re essential design principles that can transform your team’s energy, your personal impact, and the outcomes you achieve.

The Real Cost of Poor Meetings—And Why You Should Care

Let’s put this into perspective. If your time is worth €50 an hour (and for most leaders and professionals, it’s worth significantly more), then those eight wasted hours a week are costing you €400 every week. Over a month, that’s €1,600. Over the course of a year? That’s nearly €20,000 in lost time and productivity—per person.

And that’s just your time. Imagine the scale of waste when you multiply that across your whole team, department, or organisation. We’re not talking about small change here. We’re talking about thousands, potentially millions, lost every year because we haven’t stopped to rethink how we meet.

Making Work Work Again, Starts Here

This is exactly why I created the Inclusive Meeting Toolkit—a practical, no-nonsense resource to help you transform your meetings from a time-suck into a powerful driver of inclusion, engagement, and results.

For just £34.95, you can take the first step in reclaiming your time and redesigning the way you work. It’s less than the price of a team coffee run, and yet the value it can unlock is immeasurable.

Because this isn’t just about saving time. This is about creating work that works—for everyone. It’s about leading the change you want to see. It’s about proving that better is possible, starting with you.

So, are you ready to stop wasting your precious time and start making your meetings work for you?

👉 Download the Inclusive Meeting Toolkit today for £34.95

Your future self—and your team—will thank you.