Company Institutes One ‘No Meeting’ Day Each Week And Sees Incredible Results
Meetings aren't the enemy, but these productive days seem to be incredibly helpful.
Gorodenkoff | Shutterstock There are some days at work where, no matter how hard you try, you just can't get anything done. Dollars to doughnuts distractions play a huge role in that — mainly endless calls and meetings.
In fact, 47% of employees say meetings are the biggest time-waster at work.
Manager Alec Fullmer decided to remedy the meeting time suck by mirroring the structure of highly successful companies that instituted one meeting-free day a week, and the results were incredible.
Fullmer tested ‘No Meeting Wednesdays’ with his team, and productivity increased.
“I wanted to try it after reading about companies like Canva and Facebook doing no meeting days,” he explained. “We started doing them on Wednesdays.”
The majority of his team said the policy greatly improved their productivity, with only a handful saying the policy had little to no impact on their work.
Referencing an MIT Sloan study that reported less workplace stress and higher job satisfaction for companies with “no meeting days,” he added that the policy has helped instill trust between colleagues and leadership, along with a prioritization of “deep work.”
Not only did ‘no meeting’ days boost office morale, it helped prioritize employees’ productive time.
The average person is only capable of 2 to 3 hours of true productivity throughout the work day, despite having shifts closer to double the time. Since there’s a window of peak productivity, having a dedicated day with limited distractions can ensure employees are able to dedicate time on task and get work done without dividing their attention elsewhere.
“It’s possible that more meetings are happening throughout the week, and that’s okay,” Fullmer said. “I’m okay with meeting stacking.”
“What I don’t want is for meetings to be speckled throughout the whole week, ever-present and always distracting,” he said. And he's right. A Harvard Business Review survey found that 65% of managers across various professions said meetings keep them from "completing their own work, and 71% said meetings are "unproductive and inefficient."
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Fullmer explained, “It’s not perfect. Some people express that sometimes they still have meetings on Wednesdays, and now they have to schedule a meeting and feel guilty about it. But overall, the majority of us feel that trying our best to have no meeting days has been positive.”
Employees in the comments, especially those in creative industries, commended Fullmer for adopting the practice. They shared that their creative process is often interrupted by meaningless meetings and agendas. "No meeting days are critical for me, as a copywriter," one wrote, "to actually finish the work we talk about endlessly in meetings."
If ‘no meeting’ days have made your weeks more chaotic, consider organizing a priorities plan for what’s actually important.
Canva’s executive assistant Jennie Rogerson was quick to notice meetings as the thief of their founders’ time — stacking like “Tetris” on their calendars, making productive, creative, and collaborative work time impossible. “They didn’t have breathing space,” she told CNBC. “They were constantly changing gears from topic to topic.”
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After implementing “no meeting days,” which later became a company-wide policy, Rogerson said they had more space to focus on actual tasks rather than conversations and questions. It's important to note, as Fullmer mentioned, no meeting days don't actually eliminate meetings. They are simply shifted to other days of the week.
However, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Rogerson explained it should make organizers stop and think about the necessity and priority of meetings and about who needs to be there.
She emphasized, “Let’s be really intentional about our time versus just seeing meetings as the enemy.”
While meetings are great social outlets for employees and often foster collaboration, and brainstorming, having too many meaningless meetings interrupts productivity and job satisfaction on a large scale. Dial back meetings, be more intentional, and prioritize space for “deep work,” especially if you’re already in leadership.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories.